Gordon Wood The Creation of the American Republic

Gordon WoodThe Creation of the American Republic

I.3 The Public Good

Sacrifice of the individual

• “The sacrifice of individual to the greater good of the whole formed the essence of republicanism and comprehended for Americans the idealistic goal of their Revolution.” (53)

Against Monarchy

• From Paine to Hamilton on opposite ends of Whig spectrum, apparent that the people’s welfare – the public good – the central tenet of the Whig faith.

• This opposed to sacrificing the public good to private greed of small ruling groups.

• Tom Paine– “Res publica means public good”– It actually means “the public thing” – but what does

that mean?

What is the public good?

• “That the great body of the people . . . Can have interest separate from their country, or (when fairly understood) pursue any other, is not to be imagined . . .” – William Smith (56)

• Chronic divisiveness of colonial politics would disappear in unhindered support of people’s welfare

• When “their governors shall proceed from the midst of them” people would be sure their interests were being promoted and would pay obedience to officers . . . (57)

Who are “the People”?

Who are “the People”?• Everyone in community organically linked to everyone else;

therefore what was good for people was ultimately good for all the parts.

• “This common interest was not, as we might think of it , simply the sum or consensus of the particular interests that made up the community. It was rather an entity in itself, prior to and distinct from the various private interests of groups or individuals.” (58)

• Not the reconciling but the transcending of different interests – therefore republic had to be small territory and similar interests.

• Factions and interests were signs of sickness in body politic

Idea of a republic

• Organic community a cliché in 18th century• Rousseau just one (if brilliant) attempt to

conceive of one general will above various conflicting ones

• Few Whigs in 1776 prepared to reject this ideal

• Yet ironically internal tumult were just what republics were famous for

Reconciling public good with individual liberty

• Easy because most important liberty was public or political liberty

• “Civil liberty” was liberty of the civil body or free state

• [Skinner – Liberty before liberalism – Roman idea of a Free State]

• Because the people desired the general welfare there could be no real conflict between public and personal liberty. (Josiah Quincey 61)

The people and the multitude

• One or a few could “never be better judges of the Communal Good than was the multitude.” Landon Carter

• Like Locke, American whigs regarded the people as a unitary, property-holding, homogenous body – not the “vile populace or rabble of the country, nor a cabal of a number of factious persons, but . . . The greater and more judicious part of the subjects, of all ranks . . .” John Adams (62)

Not exactly our idea of rights . . .

• Revolutionaries supported freest speech against the magistracy but punished ‘seditious libel’ against the colonial assemblies

• “no man has the right to say a word that will lame the liberties of his country”

• Severe restrictions on private interests and rights through the Revolution by public and quasi-public bodies.

• Cicero – Salus Populi suprema Lex est.

But some saw the problem• William More Smith – Lycurgus of Sparta tried

to eliminate luxury by eliminating wealth and so undermined the basis of freedom

• More enlightened policy – regulate use of wealth, but do not exclude it.

• Central issue of Americans – how to control the amassing and expenditure of men’s wealth without doing violence to their freedom.

• Secular version of religious conundrum of how to deal the tempations of luxury.

I.4 – The Need for Virtue• Republics are beautiful but fragile forms of

government• Monarchies built on fear– “magnificence” to inspire awe and fear

• In republic, people ruled; officers public servants– Fear has no place– Must be obedience to law for sake of conscience.

• Americans were attempting revolutionary transformation is structure of authority

• Tories – Revolution destroying on practical basis of authority

Republican problem of authority• In monarchy, desire to do what was right in one’s own eyes restrained

by fear or force• In republic, each man must be persuaded to submerge his personal

wants to the greater good of the whole• This willingness in 18th century termed “Public Virtue”• Republics delicate because they demanded so much Public Virtue• Arrangements of institutions might reduce need for Virtue but could not

eliminate it• Revolution’s socially radical nature came from emphasis on need for

public virtue.• Public virtue – willingness to surrender all, even one’s life, for the good

of the state

Theory of Public Virtue• Not Mandeville [or Smith or Hume] where public good arises out of

private vice

• [This very much the view of contemporary libertarianism, however]

• Individual vice could only have disastrous consequences

• Enlightenment intellectual project:– Replace fear of hereafter as the basis of morality with a more natural(istic)

scientific psychology

– Earl of Shaftesbury – exquisite happiness from doing good

– Men must be convinced that their fullest satisfaction comes from subordinating their individual loves to the greater good of the whole

– Once they understood this, would subordinate individual interests to common ones

I.5 Equality

• Revolutionaries’ adoption of republicanism would be matched and ultimately sustained by a basic transformation of their social structure.

• [cf. Bailyn]• Ambiguity: equality of opportunity vs. equality

of condition• Americans meant by republicanism to change the

origin of social and political preeminence, not do away with it.

Meritocracy

• [meritocracy and anachronistic word here]• In republic, only talent would matter• Esp in South, ideal was emergence of natural

aristocracy based on virtue, temperance, independence and devotion to the commonwealth.

• This would allow scope for ambition to advance public good

Sociological assumptions

• Equality of opportunity would result in rough equality of condition

• Even radical republicans admitted inevitability of natural distinctions

• Public education would open up advantages of learning to all

“Beautiful but ambiguous ideal”

• Men would accede to distinctions as long as they were fairly earned

• But wouldn’t this in the end result in the same inequality that revolutionaries were trying to eliminate [what is Wood saying? 75c]

• Ambivalent attitude toward equality source of much 18th century “squabbling”

• 18th century America “remarkably equal yet simultaneously unequal”

Conflicted Americans• Social distinctions and symbols of status were highly respected and

intensely coveted, even more greedily than by English themselves• Yet Americans also found all these displays of superiority

particularly detestable.• Not simply social, but personal• John Adams – “the secret Springs of this surprizing Revolution”

• “This kind of tension and ambivalence of attitude, when widespread, made for a painful disjunction of values and a highly unstable social situation, both of which the ideology of republicanism was designed to mitigate.” (75)