The American Political Tradition

The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It is a 1948 book by Richard Hofstadter, an account of the ideology of previous Presidents of the United States and other political figures.

The American Political Tradition
Paperback edition
(publ. Vintage Books, 1948)
AuthorRichard Hofstadter
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SubjectAmerican politics
PublisherA. A. Knopf
Publication date
1948
LC ClassE178 .H727

Contents

Hofstadter wrote the book with the support of a fellowship from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., which was "awarded to projects containing the promise of trustworthy scholarship combined with literary distinction of the kind that means some breadth of appeal."[1]

Hofstadter's introduction argues that the major political traditions in the United States, despite contentious battles, have all "shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition ... [T]hey have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man."[2]

Rather than focusing on political conflict, Hofstadter proposes that a common ideology of "self-help, free enterprise, competition, and beneficent cupidity" has guided the United States since its inception. Through analyses of the ruling class in the U.S., Hofstadter argues that this consensus is the hallmark of political life in the U.S.

Part of Hofstadter's argument is to undermine the democratic credentials of politicians mythologized by historians, calling for reflection rather than nostalgia. Thomas Jefferson is presented as an ambiguous figure, an agrarian radical whose "laissez-faire became the political economy of the most conservative thinkers in the country".

Andrew Jackson's democracy is also characterized as "a phase in the expansion of liberated capitalism", and Progressive trustbuster Theodore Roosevelt, though he "despised the rich", is described by Hofstadter as a conservative frightened by "any sign of organized power among the people". Hofstadter also writes that Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal – an amalgam of "improvised" programs – was "far from being intrinsically progressive, [easily] capable of being adapted to very conservative purposes", but had nonetheless "revived American liberalism".[2]

The book is also known for mocking the Emancipation Proclamation as having "had all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading" and "declar[ing] free all slaves ... precisely where its effect could not reach."[3] This is not the view held by at least one more recent scholar of the Emancipation Proclamation.[4]

References
  1. Witham, Nick (2023). Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America. University of Chicago Press. pp. 24–25. ISBN 9780226826998.
  2. 15th printing/ed. August 1961 V-9, Vintage Books: New York, p. xxvi.
  3. Hofstadter, Richard, "Abraham Lincoln and the Self-Made Myth," in The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948). online. Vintage Books edition, March 1989, p. 169.
  4. Guelzo, Allen C. (2004). Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-2182-5.
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