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5bf7601
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The idea of labor, of hard work, leading to increased productivity was so novel, so radical, in the overall span of Western history that most ordinary people, most of those who labored, could scarcely believe what was happening to them. Labor had been so long thought to be the natural and inevitable consequence of necessity and poverty that most people still associated it with slavery and servitude. Therefore any possibility of oppression, ..
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radicalism
labor
prosperity
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Gordon S. Wood |
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0861be3
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Virtue became less the harsh and martial self-sacrifice of antiquity and more the modern willingness to get along with others for the sake of peace and prosperity.
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virtue
entomology
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Gordon S. Wood |
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54d729a
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Intellectual activity in a culture is not a one-way flow between the great minds and passive recipients; it is a discourse, a complex marketplace-like conglomeration of intellectual exchanges involving many participants all trying to manipulate the ideas available to them in order to explain, justify, lay blame for, or otherwise make sense of what is happening around them. Everyone, not just the great minds, participates in this complicated..
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philosophy
history-of-thought
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Gordon S. Wood |
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7219975
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Life was theater, and impressions one made on spectators were what counted. Public leaders had to become actors or characters, masters of masquerade.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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7ef381e
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Although he trusted the good sense of the people in the long run, he believed that they could easily be misled by demagogues. He was a realist who had no illusions about human nature. "The motives which predominate most human affairs," he said, "are self-love and self-interest." The common people, like the common soldiers in his army, could not be expected to be "influenced by any other principles than those of interest."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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bb05191
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The Civil War was the climax of a tragedy that was preordained from the time of the Revolution. Only with the elimination of slavery could this nation that Jefferson had called "the world's best hope" for democracy even begin to fulfill its great promise."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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2fa7965
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In monarchies, each man's desire to do what was right in his own eyes could be restrained by beer, or force, by patronage, or by honor, and by professional standing armies. By contrast, republics had to hold themselves together from the bottom up, ultimately.
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virtue
republicanism
law
government
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Gordon S. Wood |
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fca14a5
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By contrast, said Jefferson, the Southerners were "fiery, voluptuary, indolent, unsteady, independent, zealous for their own liberties but trampling on those of others, generous, candid, without attachment or pretensions to any religion but that of the heart."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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81f0fa1
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As Oliver Ellsworth, the third chief justice of the United States, declared, "As population increases, poor labourers will be so plenty as to render slaves useless. Slavery in time will not be a speck in our country."42 The leaders simply did not count on the remarkable demographic capacity of the slave states themselves, especially Virginia, to produce slaves for the expanding areas of the Deep South and the Southwest."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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0cb1328
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These multiplying societies treated the sick, aided the industrious poor, housed orphans, fed imprisoned debtors, built huts for shipwrecked sailors, and, in the case of the Massachusetts Humane Society, even attempted to resuscitate those suffering from "suspended animation," that is, those such as drowning victims who appeared to be dead but actually were not. The fear of being buried alive was a serious concern at this time. Many, like W..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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1224a42
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Only "those few, who being attached to no particular occupation themselves," said Smith, "have leisure and inclination to examine the occupations of other people."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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04115cb
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John Adams] is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him.
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john-adams
thomas-jefferson
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Gordon S. Wood |
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216758d
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It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg"--"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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057c16d
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173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one," wrote Jefferson in 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia. "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."31"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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5131d87
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it seemed likely to slide them back into the traditional status of servants or slaves, into the older world where labor was merely a painful necessity and not a source of prosperity.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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aa2355f
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republics required sufficient virtue in the character of their citizens to prevent corruption and eventual decay.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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38b2f5f
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As William Plumer of New Hampshire complained, "It is impossible to censure measures without condemning men."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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30cdc47
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Hamilton used the sinking fund to maintain the confidence of creditors in the government's securities; he had no intention of paying off the outstanding principal of the debt. Retiring the debt would only destroy its usefulness as money and as a means of attaching investors to the federal government.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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913d22b
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But what is worse than all," observed the English traveler Isaac Weld, "these wretches in their combat endeavor to their utmost to tear out each other's testicles."31"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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49a5630
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Nevertheless, some Southerners like James Monroe still had serious reservations about the compromise, believing that assumption would reduce "the necessity for State taxation" and thus would "undoubtedly leave the national government more at liberty to exercise its powers and increase the subjects on which it will act."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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db8ffef
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Americans became so thoroughly democratic that much of the period's political activity, beginning with the Constitution, was diverted to finding means and devices to tame that democracy.
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self-government
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Gordon S. Wood |
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c262b42
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Yet the Pennsylvania radicals continued to assault judges for their abuse of discretionary authority."Judges," the popular radicals contended in 1807,"very often discover that the law, as written, may be made to mean something which the legislature never thought of. The greatest part of their decisions are in fact, and in effect, making new laws."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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672640f
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Private associations of men for the purpose of promoting arts, sciences, benevolence or charity are very laudable," declared Noah Webster, but associations formed for political purposes were "dangerous to good government."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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11edbae
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These critics thought that the general commercialization of English life, including the rise of trading companies, banks, stock markets, speculators, and new moneyed men, had undermined traditional values and threatened England with ruin. The monarchy and its minions had used patronage, the national debt, and the Bank of England to corrupt the society, including the House of Commons, and to build up the executive bureaucracy at the expense ..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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7218fa2
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In 1788 Dr. Rush had told the clergy that, whatever their doctrinal differences, "you are all united in inculcating the necessity of morals," and "from the success or failure of your exertions in the cause of virtue, we anticipate the freedom or slavery of our country."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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7a2e38c
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Do not give to persons able to work for a living," declared a critic of the traditional paternalistic charity in 1807. "Do not support widows who refuse to put out their children. Do not let the means of support be made easier to one who does not work than to those who do."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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18ab510
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Consequently, as Samuel Chase pointed out in the Maryland ratifying convention, the states would end up "without power, or respect and despised--they will sink into nothing, and be absorbed in the general government." Some Federalists actually hoped for this to happen--for the states eventually to be reduced to mere administrative units of the national government."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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698c8f5
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James Wilkinson, an ex-Revolutionary War officer, and tried to convince them that the future of Americans in the West belonged to Spain. Spain offered trading licenses to Kentucky settlers, negotiated with leaders in Tennessee, and sought to attract Americans to settle in Spanish territory. Spain even enlisted Wilkinson as a paid agent of its government. Wilkinson secretly swore allegiance to the Spanish crown and for fifteen years received..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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222f85f
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The land north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachians was to be surveyed and marked off in a rectangular pattern--with east-west baselines and north-south ranges--before any of it was sold. This territory was to be divided into townships six miles square, with each township in turn cut up into thirty-six numbered sections of 640 acres each. Land was to be sold at auction, but the minimum price was set at one dollar per acre, and no ..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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bc67a63
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The advice part of the Senate's role in treaty making was dropped.125 When the president issued his Proclamation of Neutrality in 1793, he did not bother to ask for the consent of the Senate, and he thus further established the executive as the dominant authority in the conduct of foreign affairs.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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9fa9a1f
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With every ordinary person now being told that his ideas and tastes, on everything from medicine to art and government, were as good as if not better than those of "connoisseurs" and "speculative men" who were "college learnt," it is not surprising that truth and knowledge, which had seemed so palpable and attainable to the enlightened late eighteenth century, now became elusive and difficult to pin down.65 As popular knowledge came to seem..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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9704cb0
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When Elbridge Gerry proposed in the Convention that no standing army exceed three thousand men, Washington is supposed to have made a countermotion that "no foreign enemy should invade the United States at any time, with more than three thousand troops."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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c68053b
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Foreigners thought the Americans' eating habits were atrocious, their food execrable, and their coffee detestable. Americans tended to eat fast, often sharing a common bowl or cup, to bolt their food in silence, and to use only their knives in eating. Everywhere travelers complained about "the violation of decorum, the want of etiquette, the rusticity of manners in this generation."36"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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0ecd78b
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General Harmar led a force of some three hundred regulars and twelve hundred militia northward from Fort Washington (present-day Cincinnati) to attack Indian villages in the area of what is now Fort Wayne. Although the Americans burned Miami and Shawnee villages and killed two hundred Indians, they lost an equal number of men and were forced to retreat. This show of force by the United States had proved embarrassing, and the administration ..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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79b67b1
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In 1812 the U.S. Army consisted of fewer than seven thousand regular troops.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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6a6075e
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Unlike in the Northern states, the only elected officials in Virginia were federal congressmen and state legislators; all the rest were either selected by the legislature or appointed by the governor or the county courts, which were self-perpetuating oligarchies that dominated local government. Thus popular democratic politics in Virginia and elsewhere in the South was severely limited, especially in contrast to the states of the North, whe..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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c0d96e5
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Showing oneself eager for office was a sign of being unworthy of it, for the office-seeker probably had selfish views rather than the public good in mind.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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d548c8d
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The Federalists resisted every attempt by Northern artisans to organize, lest their success, as one Federalist writer put it, "excite similar attempts among all other descriptions of persons who live by manual labor."79"
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Gordon S. Wood |
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1399daf
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By contrast with this extensive Republican use of the press, the Federalists did little. Presuming that they had a natural right to rule, they had no need to stir up public opinion, which was what demagogues did in exploiting the people's ignorance and innocence.37 Federalist editors and printers of newspapers like John Fenno and his Gazette of the United States did exist, but most of these supporters of the national government were conserv..
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Gordon S. Wood |
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8ee7d5b
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In the decades following the Revolution, America changed so much and so rapidly that Americans not only became used to change, but came to expected and prize it.
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progress
novelty
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Gordon S. Wood |
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5ab5fa2
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Jefferson's extraordinary efforts to defend the rights of neutrals to trade freely drove the country into a deep depression and severely damaged his presidency. He ended up violating much of what he and his party stood for.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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e45e2f7
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The Baptists expanded from 94 congregations in 1760 to 858 in 1790 to become the single largest religious denomination in America. The Methodists had no adherents at all in 1760, but by 1790 they had created over seven hundred congregations--despite the fact that the great founder of English Methodism, John Wesley, had publicly opposed the American Revolution.
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Gordon S. Wood |
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34d2ece
|
In a republic that depended on the intelligence and virtue of all citizens, the diffusion of knowledge had to be widespread. Indeed, said Noah Webster, education had to be "the most important business in civil society."
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Gordon S. Wood |
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a9d2bbf
|
Between 1798 and 1808 American colleges were racked by mounting incidents of student defiance and outright rebellion--on a scale never seen before or since in American history.
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Gordon S. Wood |