Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (159 page)

82
. Linda K. Kerber,
Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America
(Ithaca, 1970), 162; Fischer,
Revolution of American Conservatism
, 26 .

83
. Fischer,
Revolution of American Conservatism
, 32; AH to William Hamilton, 2 May 1797,
Papers of Hamilton
, 21: 78 .

84
. Steven J. Novak,
The Rights of Youth: American Colleges and Student Revolt, 1798–1815
(Cambridge, MA, 1977), 55 .

85
. White,
The Jeffersonians
, 13.

86
. Marshall Foletta,
Coming to Terms with Democracy: Federalist Intellectuals and the Shaping of an American Culture
(Charlottesville, 2001), 30 .

87
. Winfred E. A. Bernard,
Fisher Ames: Federalist and Statesman, 1758–1808
(Chapel Hill, 1965), 341 .

88
. Ames to Oliver Wolcott, 3 Aug. 1800,
Works of Fisher Ames
(1854), ed. W. B. Allen (Indianapolis, 1983), 2: 1368 .

89
. Broussard,
Southern Federalists
, 308.

90
. Banner,
To the Hartford Convention
, 133–34; Albrecht Koschnik,
“Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together”: Associations, Partisanship, and Culture in Philadelphia, 1775–1840
(Charlottesville, 2007), 3–4, 153–83 .

91
. Fischer,
Revolution of American Conservatism
, 86.

92
. Ronald P. Formisano,
The Transformation of Political Culture: Massachusetts Parties, 1790s–1840s
(New York, 1983), 74 .

93
. David Waldstreicher,
In the midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism
(Chapel Hill, 1997), 216 .

94
. Pasley, “1800 as a Revolution in Political Culture,” in Horn et al., eds.,
The Revolution of 1800
, 132–33; Jeffrey L. Pasley,
“The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic
(Charlottesville, 2001), 126, 153–75; TJ to Priestley, 21 March 1801,
Jefferson: Writings
, 1086 .

95
. Pasley, “
Tyranny of Printers
,” 236; Ames to Christopher Gore, 13 Dec. 1802,
Works of Ames
, ed. Allen, 2: 1445–46. See Charles G. Steffen, “Newspapers for Free: The Economies of Newspaper Circulation in the Early Republic,”
JER
, 23 (2004), 381–419 .

96
. William Crafts JR.,
An Oration on the Influence of Moral causes on National Character, Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, on their Anniversary, 28 August, 1817
(Cambridge MA, 1817), 5–6; Tunis Wortman,
A Treatise Concerning Political Enquiry, and the Liberty of the Press
(New York, 1800), 180 .

97
. Gordon S. Wood, “The Democratization of Mind in the American Revolution,” in
Leadership in the American Revolution: Library of Congress Symposia in the American Revolution
(Washington, DC, 1974), 67; this article has an extended analysis of public opinion (63–89), from which this discussion is drawn.

98
. JM to BR, 7 March 1790,
Papers of Madison
, 13: 93; JM, “Public Opinion,” 19 Dec. 1791,
Madison: Writings
, 500–501 .

99
. [George Hay],
An Essay on the Liberty of the Press
(Philadelphia, 1799), 40; TJ, Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801,
Jefferson: Writings
, 493 .

100
. Richard Buel Jr.,
Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815
(Ithaca, 1972), 252 .

101
. John C. Miller,
The Federalist Era, 1789–1801
(New York, 1960), 232; Isaac Chapman Bates,
An Oration, Pronounced at Northampton, July 4, 1805
(Northampton, MA, 1805), 6–7, 15 .

102
. TJ, Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801,
Jefferson: Writings
, 493; BR to TJ, 12 March 1801,
Letters of Rush
, 2: 831. Of course, the new liberal idea of freedom of the press did not immediately take hold. As late as 1813, for example, Chief Justice James Kent of the New York Supreme Court still clung to the notion that “individual character must be protected, or social happiness and domestic peace are destroyed,” and upheld a libel charge against a printer in the state of New York. Donald Roper, “James Kent and the Emergence of New York’s Libel Law,”
American Journal of Legal History
, 17 (1973), 228–29 .

103
. Wortman,
Treatise Concerning Political Enquiry,
118.

104
. Wortman,
Treatise Concerning Political Enquiry
, 118–19, 122–23, 155–57 .

105
. TJ to JA, 11 Jan. 1816, in Lester J. Cappon, ed.,
The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams
(Chapel Hill, 1959), 2: 458 .

106
. Wortman,
A Treatise Concerning Political Enquiry,
180; Richard E. Welch Jr.,
Theodore Sedgwick, Federalist: A Political Portrait
(Middletown, CT, 1965), 211.

107
. Samuel Williams,
The Natural and Civil History of Vermont
(Walpole, NH, 1794), 2: 394; Joseph Hopkinson,
Annual Discourse, Delivered Before the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
(1810), in Gordon S. Wood, ed.,
The Rising Glory of America, 1760–1820
, rev. ed. (Boston, 1990) 333; Ames, “The Mire of Democracy,” in Simpson, ed.,
Federalist Literary Mind
, 54.

108
. Ratcliffe,
Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic,
86.

109
. Koschnik, “
Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together
,” 184–227; Foletta,
Coming to Terms with Democracy
.

110
. Richard E. Ellis,
The Jeffersonian Crisis: Courts and Politics in the Young Republic
(New York, 1971), 234 .

111
. Andrew Shankman,
Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania
(Lawrence, KS, 2004), 146, 147 .

1
. In the opening chapters of his classic account of the Jefferson and Madison administrations, Henry Adams exaggerated the traditional and static character of American society in 1800 in order to contrast it with a more modern and dynamic America at the end of Madison’s presidency in 1817. But America in 1800 was already an energetic and enterprising society and anything but stable. The roots of the extraordinary changes taking place in this period lay in the Revolution, not in Jefferson’s election. For a necessary corrective to Adams, see Noble E. Cunningham,
The United States in 1800: Henry Adams Revisited
(Charlottesville, 1988.) For a justification of Adams’s approach, see Garry Wills,
Henry Adams and the Making of America
(Boston, 2005).

2
. Herbert S. Klein,
A Population History of the United States
(Cambridge, UK, 2004), 77. The fertility of black women was equally high.

3
. Ralph H. Brown,
Mirror for Americans: Likeness of the Eastern Seaboard, 1810
(New York, 1943), 30.

4
.
Niles’ Weekly Register
, 1 (1811–12), 10.

5
. Edward J. Nygren and Bruce Robertson, eds.,
Views and Visions: American Landscape Before 1830
(Washington, DC, 1986), 37; Max Farrand, ed.,
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787
(New Haven, 1911, 1937), 1: 583.

6
. Cunningham,
United States in 1800
, 6; Richard C. Wade,
The Urban Frontier: Pioneer Life in Early Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Lexington, Louisville, and St. Louis
(Chicago, 1959); Harriet Simpson Arnow,
Flowering of the Cumberland
(Lexington, KY, 1963), 90.

7
.
Monthly Magazine
, 1 (1799), 129.

8
.
Monthly Magazine
, 1 (1799), 129; William A. Schaper,
Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina
(1901; New York, 1968), 139.

9
. Curtis P. Nettels,
The Emergence of a National Economy, 1775–1815
(New York, 1962), 158–59.

10
. Andrew R. L. Cayton, The
Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780–1825
(Kent, OH, 1986), 116; Lucy Fletcher Kellogg, in Joyce Appleby, ed.,
Recollections of the Early Republic: Selected Autobiographies
(Boston, 1997), 145, 147; Malcolm J. Rohrbough,
The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850
(New York, 1978), 36–37, 96–97; Noel M. Loomis, “Philip Nolan’s Entry into Texas in 1800,” in John Francis McDermott, ed.,
The Spanish in the Mississippi Valley, 1762–1804
(Urbana, IL, 1974), 120.

11
. James L. Huston,
Securing the Fruits of Labor: The American Concepts of Wealth Distribution, 1765–1900
(Baton Rouge, 1998), 89; Adna Ferrin Weber,
The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics
(New York, 1969), 40–47; Philip Abrams and E. A. Wrigley, eds.,
Towns in Society: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology
(Cambridge, UK, 1978), 247–48.

12
. Franklin, “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America,” (1784),
Franklin: Writings
, 975.

13
. Jerry Grundfest,
George Clymer: Philadelphia Revolutionary
, 1739–1813 (New York, 1982), 141; Lucius Versus Bierce,
Travels in the Southland, 1822–1823: The Journal of Lucius Versus Bierce
, ed. George W. Knepper (Columbus, OH, 1966), 103.

14
. Patricia S. Watlington,
The Partisan Spirit: Kentucky Politics, 1779–1792
(New York, 1972), 46; Morris Birkbeck,
Letters from Illinois
(London, 1818), 14; Rohrbough,
Trans-Appalachian Frontier
, 55; William C. Preston,
Reminiscences
, quoted in Charles L. Sanford, ed.,
Quest for America, 1810–1824
(New York, 1964), 26; Donald B. Cole, “A Yankee in Kentucky: The Early Years of Amos Kendall, 1789–1828,” Mass. Hist. Soc.,
Proc
., 109 (1997), 31.

15
. Joyce Appleby,
Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans
(Cambridge, MA, 2000), 6.

16
. Johann David Schoepf,
Travels in the Confederation
, 1783–1784 (Philadelphia, 1911), 1: 238–39.

17
. Christopher Clark,
Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War
(Chicago, 2006), 79.

18
. Lawrence W. Towner, “The Indentures of Boston’s Poor Apprentices: 1734–1805,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts,
Publications
, 43 (1956–1963), 427; Philip S. Foner, ed.,
The Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800: A Documentary Sourcebook of Constitutions, Addresses, Resolutions, and Toasts
(Westport, CT, 1976), 10.

19
. Charles William Janson,
Stranger in America
(London, 1807), ed. Carl S. Driver (New York, 1935), xxiii–iv.

20
. Janson,
Stranger in America
, 423–24, 311, 20, 86; William C. Dowling,
Literary Federalism in the Age of Jefferson: Joseph Dennie and The Port Folio, 1801–1811
(Columbia, SC, 1999), 1.

21
. Samuel L. Mitchill,
An Address to the Citizens of New York
(New York, 1800), 23; Joseph Kastner,
A Species of Eternity
(New York, 1977), 195.

22
. James A. Henretta,
The Origins of American Capitalism: Selected Essays
(Boston, 1991); Allan Kulikoff,
The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism
(Charlottesville, 1992); Christopher Clark,
The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780–1860
(Ithaca, 1990). For analyses of the “transition to capitalism” debate, see Gordon S. Wood, “Inventing American Capitalism,”
New York Review of Books
(9 June 1994), 44–49; and Wood, “The Enemy Is Us: Democratic Capitalism in the Early Republic,” in Paul A. Gilje, ed.,
Wages of Independence: Capitalism in the Early Republic
(Madison, WI, 1997), 137–53.

23
. Rothenberg, whose book is based on empirical data drawn from account books, probate inventories, and tax valuations, argues that an authentic market economy exists wherever buyers and sellers are in such free exchange with one another over a region that the prices of the same goods tend to converge. In other words, a market economy, Rothenberg concludes, emerged in rural new england only when the prices of farm commodities, farm labor (or wages), and rural savings (or interest), came to be set, not by custom or by government, but by the impersonal exchanges of the market. Winifred Barr Rothenberg,
From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts, 1750–1850
(Chicago, 1992), 124, 220, 243, 101.