The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Gordon S. Wood ended The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, a 1969 book based on a dissertation supervised by Bernard Bailyn, with the "End of Classical Politics." Wood had argued that, after the Constitutional ratification debates, "the stability of government...now depended upon the prevention of the various social interests from incorporating themselves too firmly in the government. Institutional or governmental politics was thus abstracted in a curious way from its former associations with the society...This revolution marked an end of the classical conception of politics." The first section of the book explored how and why "the colonists" appropriated "Whig...ideals" of "liberty", which came to represent the absolute ideal unity of "personal liberty" with "public liberty."[2]

In the final chapter of the book, Wood attempted to demonstrate that the "assumptions" and premises of Federalist No. 10, "different from those of the Whigs in 1776", proliferated among the ratifying framers as an "American science of politics." The "Federalist Persuasion" for " 'the people' " as sovereign rested, in turn, on notional "interests"—and vice-versa. Government further retained Tory urgings from "the early seventies 'to protect citizens in their personal liberty and property.' " Wood declared that "public or political liberty, the right of the people to share in the government—lost its significance for a system in which the people participated throughout." But a potential effect of these premises and "assumptions" was the rise of "factions" in government—fearful representatives catering to " 'popular resentment' ", or delegates invoking the " 'silent awe of a predominant party.' " For Wood's James Madison, "unless individuals and minorities were protected against the power of majorities, no government could truly be free."[3] Still, a faction could be "a minority or majority of the whole."[4] In "such circumstances the aim of government, in James Iredell's words, had become twofold: " 'the security of every individual, as well as a fluctuating majority of the people.' " The emphasis, however, was on the perils of "factious majorities." Factions in a legislature, especially majority factions, could not define the " 'public interest' " because "the liberty that was now emphasized was personal or private, the protection of individual rights against all government encroachments, particularly by the legislature."[5]

Wood's Federalists were certain that the embrace of "personal liberty" by " 'the people' " would remedy its own potential effect, ensuring protections for " 'the rights of individuals' " when a legislative faction aimed to define the distinct " 'interests of society.' " " In that regard, these "men" considered "public and private liberty as antagonistic rather than complementary... Such a total grounding of government in self-interest and consent had made old-fashioned popular revolutions obsolete." Yet this remedy, "the Federalist image of a public good undefinable by factious majorities in small states but somehow capable of formulation by the best men of a large society may have been chimera." Any ulterior "partisan and aristocratic purposes" for such circular reasoning failed to undermine an "intellectual achievement [that] really transcended their particular political and social intentions." In Wood's estimation, the "formulation of this system" as an "intellectual achievement" was neither his proposition, nor ultimately theirs, because the "political theory" that had "been obscured" prior to his study contributed in linear "time to the destruction of the very social world they had sought to maintain." Wood concluded that the "political theory" was "peculiarly the product of a democratic society, without a precise beginning or an ending."[6]

In 1992, as Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution first circulated among scholars, historian Daniel T. Rodgers engaged with debates launched by Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Creation of the American Republic. Periodization, according to Rodgers, was the source of much controversy between proponents of "Harvard republicanism" and proponents of "St. Louis republicanism." In the context of The Creation of the American Republic, "when Wood turned to the early national period he found a society dancing feverishly to the tune of 'modern American liberalism.' The mark of St. Louis republicanism, by contrast, was a reluctance to date the 'end of classical politics' as early as Wood had put it." As a result of these fractious disputes, "Republicanism_H collapsed all at once in a clatter of constitutional argument. Republicanism_S staggered on to a slower death." His review essay did not include the extended periodization in Radicalism.[7]

Wood clarified the vaunted and maligned "End of Classical Politics" in a new preface to his 1969 study. First, he reminded readers, "it is important to remember that the boxlike categories of 'republicanism' and 'liberalism' are essentially the inventions of us historians." In Wood's estimation, the bifurcation of "Harvard republicanism" and "St. Louis republicanism" had been premised on "the mistaken notion that one set of ideas simply replaced another en bloc...after the debates and discoveries of 1787-88 most Americans (John Adams was a conspicuous exception) more or less ceased talking about politics in the way theorists since Aristotle had—as a maneuvering and mixing of three social entities or forms of government [monarchy, lords, commons]—and began talking about politics in recognizably modern ways—as a competition among interests or parties in the society for control of a quasi-autonomous state...Cultural changes of that magnitude do not take place in such a neat and sudden manner. Republicanism was indeed gradually transformed into something we call liberalism, but in subtle and complicated ways that kept many republican sentiments alive."[8]

In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood argued that in the "classical republican tradition our modern distinction between positive and negative liberties was not yet clearly perceived, and the two forms of liberty were still often seen as one." Wood premised this argument with the notion that "public or political liberty—or what we now call positive liberty—meant participation in government. And this political liberty in turn provided the means by which the personal liberty and private rights of the individual—what we today call negative liberty—were protected."[9] If "disinterestedness" in government "was based on liberty and independence, then it followed that only autonomous individuals free from any ties of interest and paid by no master were qualified to be citizens. Jefferson and many other republican idealists hoped that all ordinary yeoman farmers who owned their own land...would be independent and free enough of pecuniary temptations and marketplace interests to be virtuous." Still, for many "republican idealists", who renounced any " 'commonwealth' " shift to " 'absolute Monarchy' ", the "disinterested leadership could only be located among the landed gentry whose income [derived] from the rents of tenants."[10] Yet, most "merchants active in their businesses" sought to attain "wealth and leisure sufficient to avoid any day-to-day involvement in their businesses."[11] Their "world" still seemed "small and intimate...which is why the colonists especially were quick to explain a concatenation of events as caused by conspiracy."[12]

The Revolution also sparked unresolved "ideological" debates over the "commercial nature of real estate." Wood explained that "virtue became identified with decency" and was "soft and feminized." Ideas of "classical virtue had flowed from the citizen's participation in politics...But modern virtue flowed from the citizen's participation in society, not in government, which the liberal-minded increasingly saw as the principal source of the evils of the world." During the American Revolution, "some now argued that even commerce, that traditional enemy of classical virtue, was in fact a source of modern virtue."[13] Wood cast early Federalism as a response to Anti-Federalist questions regarding the very notion of an expansive "[the] United States" and the solecism imperium-in-imperio, sovereignty-within-sovereignty. James Madison and his Federalists offered a last rebuttal: the locus of "power," sovereignty, would be vested in "the people," not in organs of government. In his earlier dissertation, Wood had described the Federalist rebuttal as "disingenuous." He also previously depicted this "mutuality of interests" as generating a crucible for "the alliance of power and liberty."[14]

In an "American science of politics", government harnessed "interests," which transformed "positive liberty" into, for instance, the United States public interest, sustained by "patrician" disinterestedness---a refraction, rather than reflection, of "interests."[15] Wood held that the idea of government officials as "umpires" for "republican liberty" was soon discarded. "By the late 1780s," Wood opined, "many of the younger revolutionary leaders like James Madison were willing to confront the reality of interests in America," exemplified by Madison's Federalist No. 10. The federal government became a " 'disinterested and dispassionate umpire in disputes between different passions and interests in the State.' "[16] Even with plans to expand public education, potential officeholders needed to become "liberally educated and cosmopolitan enough to have the breadth of perspective to comprehend all the different interests in society." Reading law, out of all the "learned professions, would win the electoral day. Anti-Federalists pointed out that attorney profits, even if supplemented by pro bono work, turned "lawyers into tradesmen or artisans" in an interests-based society. Not so, rejoined Wood's Alexander Hamilton: "being a lawyer was not an occupation and different from other profit-making activities." Both Federalists and Anti-Federalists ultimately countenanced a surplus of candidates in extended electoral spheres, which James Madison conjectured increased campaign competition and the likelihood that anxious elected delegates, despite coming from faraway places, would constantly clamor to reflect constituent "interests."[17]

In Federalist No. 10, James Madison held that disinterested representation defined republics, yet attempted to fuse disinterestedness with direct democracy in a system that would later be deemed representative democracy for an "American science of politics."[18] In an oft-quoted passage from Federalist No. 56, Madison propounded that "it is a sound and important principle that the representative ought to be acquainted with the interests and circumstances of his constituents. But this principle can extend no further than to those circumstances and interests to which the authority and care of the representative relate."[19] The crux of the matter was the fulfillment of both "patrician" disinterestedness and representative "authority" over constituent "interests", such as income, vocation, commerce, urban labor, etc.[20] Also, Madison expressed concerns about government by the "few" as well as government by the "many." In writing Federalist No. 62, for instance, Madison grew skeptical of any fiscal " 'regulation' " because, counterintuitively, " 'every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue; or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change and can trace its consequences' ", rather than sharing this exclusive purview with " 'the great body of their fellow citizens...[these] laws are made for the few not for the many.' "[21]

For Federalists, officeholders could persist as disinterested "umpires" and reflective representatives due to "a notion that has carried into our own time---that lawyers and other professionals are somehow free of the marketplace, are less selfish and interested...than merchants and businessmen." Federalist representatives were indeed "liberally educated and cosmopolitan enough to have the breadth of perspective to comprehend all the different interests in society."[22] Conversely, in Anti-Federalist disquisitions, "the occupations and interests of the society were so diverse and discrete that only individuals sharing a particular occupation or interest could speak for that occupation or interest." The Anti-Federalists who "lost the battle over the Constitution" believed that "only an explicit form of representation that allowed Germans, Baptists, artisans, farmers, and so on each to send delegates of its own kind into the political arena...In these populist Anti-Federalist calls for the most explicit form of representation possible, and not in Madison's Federalist No. 10, lay the real origins of American pluralism and American interest-group politics...Insofar as American politics became localist and dominated by interest groups and calls for extended suffrage, the Anti-Federalists prepared the way."[23]