Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 12:26:10 -0600


From: Everdell@aol.com
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 07:38:28 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: REPLY: _American Aurora_ and the Doing of History (Rosenfeld)

I haven't read Richard Rosenfeld's _American Aurora_ yet, but I was hoping
to, and I shall certainly do so sooner now that I have read Mr. Rosenfeld's
reply to Winship. I once spent several days in the NYPL with that long,
comprehensive and not so well-executed history of republics, Adams's
_Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States_ (1787).
Although there is in it great fear of democracy and much gloomy suspicion
of the Polybian cycle in the fate of republics, I will challenge anyone to
find a pro-monarchical sentence in it. The charge of monarchism against
Adams cannot even be supported by Adams's later _Discourses on Davila_.
Adams's main problem was that he (like Hume) occasionally saw in the late
Hanoverian British monarchy the outlines of a genuine republic in which no
one person was sovereign. A subsidiary problem was that American readers
and journalists found this thought too hard to grasp and easy to twist into
something simpler and easier to hate. Democrats (small "d") found it
easier to argue against monarchy than aristocracy, especially in the
aristocratic south. It was a bit like attacking Communism in the 50s.

That Democratic-Republicans genuinely feared the Federalist ascendancy is
clear. That there was a Federalist reign of terror I won't argue with,
except to point out that there was no guillotine in it. But please, let
history's second look give Adams a break. Like other highly intelligent
politicians with the ill luck to be also vain and straightforward, his
political thinking was misunderstood and turned against him. Madison, who
knew better, was reporting on lesser minds when he wrote to Jefferson in
1788, "J. Adams has made himself obnoxious to many particularly in the
Southern states by the political principles in his [_Defence_]."

-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 09:53:01 -0600


From: Everdell@aol.com
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 07:22:57 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Rosenfeld)

"Can anyone read Mr. Adams' defence of the American constitutions without
seeing he was a monarchist?" (TJ to William Short, Monticello, January 8,
1825).

And I have done just that. Thank you, Richard Rosenfeld. That's the most
elegant use of a quotation I've seen in a long long time.

But I'm not sure it's touche'. Here's why. I don't think Jefferson
himself really read the _Defence_ in the 1780s or 1790s. Adams sent him a
copy of volume 2 in September, 1787, and TJ replied "I judge of it from
the first volume [...] The first principle of a good government is
certainly a distribution of it's powers into executive, judiciary, and
legislative."(28Sep, 1787), which is the republican definition favored by
both men. He followed up this anemic statement by alluding to the
possible conversion of the Dutch republic's executive into a monarch.
Jefferson later told Adams that the US executive was a "bad edition of the
Polish monarchy" (13Nov, 1787) because it was initially weak but
incumbents were re-eligible for life. Adams replied by stating, I believe
accurately, that "You are Apprehensive of Monarchy; I, of Aristocracy. I
would therefore have given more Power to the President and less to the
Senate." (6Dec87). Jefferson's "reading" reminds me of that of a glib
undergraduate in a seminar, who mistakes his/her own commentary on an
incomplete reading for the work itself.

Madison, I think, really did read the _Defence_, in part because he was
working on a similar history of republics, limited to the federated ones.

I do not know, and can't easily find out here, whether Jefferson read the
_Defence_ around 1825, in the last years of his life, when he was
corresponding amiably with John Adams and had come to a sort of agreement
with him that aristocracy was, if not normal in any society, at least hard
to prevent. In any case, his memory of it may have been colored by the
positions he had taken since, and he certainly never took up the question
of Adams's supposed monarchism with the author. Was that because he knew
the question would have pained old Adams? Or led them both back to that
charge of bad faith against Jefferson in the 1790s?

In any case, I think one must evaluate these situations without assuming
Jefferson was as candid as Adams. The difference in that quality was
evident in their characters all their lives.

-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Bernstein)
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 08:28:20 -0600


Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 10:33:16 -0800
From: "Richard B. Bernstein" < rbernstein@nyls.edu >
Subject: re monarchism in American political discourse

Perhaps one of the difficulties that our discussion experiences now has to
do with a subject that deserves to be studied anew -- the rapidly changing
meanings of "monarchy" and "monarchism" in American political discourse of
the 1780s and 1790s.

I suspect that under the rapid pressure of events and controversy
differing political factions and groups assigned different meanings to the
term, and one reason for the increasing bitterness of political controversy
may have been the growing gap in reasoning separating the two sides.

For example, to Alexander Hamilton monarchy was the institution at the
core of the unwritten British constitution -- a chief executive office
whose holder was the nation's sovereign, who owned the nation and its armed
forces as of right, who succeeded by heredity (except in extraordinary
circumstances such as those of 1688-1689), who could pass the title and
office to his or her heir, and who could not be removed from office except
in extraordinary circumstances and by extraordinary means (as in 1649 and
1688-1689). Thus, when on 18 June 1787 he delivered his now-notorious
speech to the Federal Convention advocating a chief executive who would be
elected by electors chosen by electors chosen by the people (a mechanism of
double refinement and filtration) and who would serve during good behavior
(that is, for life unless impeached, convicted, and removed from office),
he was not advocating monarchy as he understood it. Moreover, even though
in that speech he might have praised the British constitution in theory as
the best form of government ever seen, he was simply echoing the
conventional wisdom of his time, as espoused (among others) by "the
celebrated Montesquieu."

By contrast, his adversaries in the 1780s and 1790s saw the idea of tenure
during good behavior (which was the practical equivalent of life tenure) as
synonymous with monarchy, and thus charged Hamilton with advocating
monarchy. Moreover, anyone who echoed the conventional wisdom of
Montesquieu about the unwritten British constitution risked being accused
of monarchism.

Louise Dunbar did a study of monarchism and monarchist tendencies in the
United States during the revolutionary and early national periods back in
1922; few modern scholars even remember her work, and none so far as I know
has sought to revisit the subject. If anyone's looking for a good
dissertation subject, this probably would be it.

Richard B. Bernstein
Adjunct Professor, New York Law School
Daniel M. Lyons Visiting Professor in American History, Brooklyn
College/CUNY (1997-1998)
Assistant Book Review Editor for Constitutional History, H-LAW
< rbernstein@nyls.edu >

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Rosenfeld)
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 08:30:27 -0600


Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 15:54:05 -0500
From: "R.N.Rosenfeld" < apiri19-2@idt.net >
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)

Bill Everdell writes:

> "Can anyone read Mr. Adams' defence of the American constitutions without
> seeing he was a monarchist?" (TJ to William Short, Monticello, January 8,
> 1825).
>
> And I have done just that. Thank you, Richard Rosenfeld. That's the most
> elegant use of a quotation I've seen in a long long time.

Thank you, Bill Everdell.

> But I'm not sure it's touche'. Here's why. I don't think Jefferson
> himself really read the _Defence_ in the 1780s or 1790s.

I think you have changed gears, Bill Everdell. My original point was that
non-Republicans feared Adams'monarchism even before the government began,
citing Madison's letter of 1788, which noted critical reaction to Adams'
Defence of the Constitutions, etc. You answered that, in the cited letter,
Madison was merely reporting "lesser minds" and that no one could find
evidence (a single line) of Adams' monarchism in the Defence. I countered
with Thomas Jefferson's letter of 1825 to prove that someone, other than
those of "lesser minds," found monarchism in Adams' Defence. You now
question whether Jefferson read the Defence in the 1780s or 1790s or not.
I'm confused. My point was about reading, not timing. You then say,

Jefferson's "reading" reminds me of that of a glib
> undergraduate in a seminar, who mistakes his/her own commentary on an
> incomplete reading for the work itself...
>
> I do not know, and can't easily find out here, whether Jefferson read the
> _Defence_ around 1825... In any case, his memory of it may have been
colored by the
> positions he had taken since, and he certainly never took up the question
> of Adams's supposed monarchism with the author. Was that because he knew
> the question would have pained old Adams? Or led them both back to that
> charge of bad faith against Jefferson in the 1790s?
>
> In any case, I think one must evaluate these situations without assuming
> Jefferson was as candid as Adams. The difference in that quality was
> evident in their characters all their lives.

I guess you regard Jefferson as one more of the "lesser minds" or perhaps
as untrustworthy. So now you see my problem. Historians view everyone on
the Republican side as either a radical, a lesser mind, or untrustworthy.
Funny. That's the way Washington, Adams, and Hamilton viewed them.

Incidentally, that single line you are looking for:

"The Lacedaemonian government... had the three essential parts of the best
possible government; it was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy."

John Adams, Defence of The Constitutions of Government of the United
States, Vol. I, (1787), C.F. Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams...
(Boston, 1850-1856), IV, 553.

Perhaps we should continue this discussion after you've read American Aurora.

Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Rosenfeld)
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 10:58:32 -0600


Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 11:11:12 -0500
From: "R.N.Rosenfeld" < apiri19-2@idt.net >
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Bernstein)

> Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 10:33:16 -0800
> From: "Richard B. Bernstein" < rbernstein@nyls.edu >
> Subject: re monarchism in American political discourse
>
> Perhaps one of the difficulties that our discussion experiences
now has to
> do with a subject that deserves to be studied anew -- the rapidly changing
> meanings of "monarchy" and "monarchism" in American political discourse of
> the 1780s and 1790s.

> I suspect that under the rapid pressure of events and controversy
> differing political factions and groups assigned different meanings to the
> term, and one reason for the increasing bitterness of political controversy
> may have been the growing gap in reasoning separating the two sides.

I think Richard B. Bernstein has an important point here. As I think is
evident in American Aurora, the word "monarchical" was, in the late
1790s, coming to mean something more akin to the modern-day word
"totalitarian." In part this was driven by the so-called "radicals"
Michael Durey describes, who fled George III's early 1790s alien and
sedition acts to find similar measures being adopted in the United
States.

> For example, to Alexander Hamilton monarchy was the institution at the
> core of the unwritten British constitution -- a chief executive office
> whose holder was the nation's sovereign, who owned the nation and its armed
> forces as of right, who succeeded by heredity (except in extraordinary
> circumstances such as those of 1688-1689), who could pass the title and
> office to his or her heir, and who could not be removed from office except
> in extraordinary circumstances and by extraordinary means (as in 1649 and
> 1688-1689). Thus, when on 18 June 1787 he delivered his now-notorious
> speech to the Federal Convention advocating a chief executive who would be
> elected by electors chosen by electors chosen by the people (a mechanism of
> double refinement and filtration) and who would serve during good behavior
> (that is, for life unless impeached, convicted, and removed from office),
> he was not advocating monarchy as he understood it.

To quote Thomas Jefferson, "[A colleague] takes great pain to
prove...that Hamilton was no monarchist...This may pass with uninformed
readers, but not with those who have had it from Hamilton's own mouth.
At my own table, in presence of Mr. Adams...and myself, in a dispute
between Mr. Adams and himself, he avowed his preference of monarchy over
every other government..." TJ to William Short, Monticello Jan. 8, 1825.

Moreover, even though
> in that speech he might have praised the British constitution in theory as
> the best form of government ever seen, he was simply echoing the
> conventional wisdom of his time, as espoused (among others) by "the
> celebrated Montesquieu."

Montesquieu had no problem with monarchy.

Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Rosenfeld)
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 22:01:50 -0600


Date: Mon, 27 Oct 1997 16:39:21 -0500
From: "R.N.Rosenfeld" < apiri19-2@idt.net >
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)

Bill Everdell certainly gives an irrefutable rejoinder to Thomas
Jefferson's question, "Can anyone read Mr. Adams' defence of the American
constitutions without seeing he was a monarchist?" (TJ to William Short,
Monticello, January 8, 1825).

Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 22:22:34 -0600


From: Everdell@aol.com
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 11:57:27 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Rosenfeld)

Richard Rosenfeld writes: "I guess you regard Jefferson as one more of
the "lesser minds" or perhaps as untrustworthy."

Untrustworthy on many points, but certainly not a lesser mind.

And continues by writing: "So now you see my problem. Historians view
everyone on the Republican side as either a radical, a lesser mind, or
untrustworthy."

You generalize too quickly. I'm working on one point, Adams's monarchism
-- or his reputation for monarchism.

The "single line" you offer me:

"The Lacedaemonian government... had the three essential parts of the best
possible government; it was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy."

is better adduced for my view than yours. Adams believed at the time of
writing _Defence_ that a republic, which he defined as a government of
more than one person out of Johnson's _Dictionary_, was a somewhat
unstable form best preserved by the ancient means of "mixed government,"
mixed by combining the three ancient forms of government by one, by few,
and by many. Sparta had lasted the longest of all republics so defined
and so preserved. It had a "monarchy" of sorts -- an executive branch
composed of not one king but two.
Sparta was in fact the 18th-century political thinker's standard example
of an aristocratic republic, and the line shows Adams's preference for it.

I would argue -- indeed I have argued in my own book, and in a subsequent
article -- that the problem with most American historiography on these
issues is an idiosyncratic definition of "republic" frozen by that
Madisonian Federalist from New England, Noah Webster. The root meaning of
"republic" everywhere in the world except here, is a state whose
government is not in the hands of a single person. Myself, I prefer more
democratic republics than Adams did, and like Paine's vision more than
Adams's. But both Paine and Adams were republicans in the sense of being
hostile to monarchy.

After I read your book, I'll be back. Maybe you might want to read mine.

-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Bernstein)
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 10:10:15 -0600


Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 10:29:44 -0800
From: "Richard B. Bernstein" < rbernstein@nyls.edu >
Subject: political history, old and new

I apologize for my probable misreading of Bridgett Williams-Searle's
original post on this subject, and I think that we're a lot closer in
outlook than might have appeared at first. (I still wince at jargon, but
let it pass, let it pass.)

In fact, H-SHEAR a few months ago featured an excellent and wide-ranging
discussion of "the new political history" practiced by such fine scholars
as Joanne B. Freeman and David Waldstreicher of Yale, and as someone who
does constitutional/political history with a slight institutional bent, I
have benefitted immensely from their work; moreover, it is clear that the
gems of political and administrative and institutional history of earlier
generations still have unmined gold for scholars pursuing new approaches.
This is not to say that the new approaches are the only good approaches --
some so-called older ways of investigation our political past are still
valuable and, if practiced with sensitivity and insight and an awareness of
new as well as older techniques, have much to teach us about political
history in all the meanings of that phrase.

Perhaps I unduly assumed that Bridgett Williams-Searle's championing of
the new implied a dismissal of the old. Whether that was a consequence of
misreading or a plausible reading of a passage that she intended to mean
something quite different, let's accept her invitation and continue the
discussion.

One afterthought re Joyce Appleby's reading of John Adams's DEFENCE OF THE
CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES (1787) -- given the point,
as made by such scholars as Charles Mullett, Gilbert Chinard, Zoltan
Haraszti, John R. Howe, Jr., Gordon S. Wood, and Henry Steele Commager
about the persistence in eighteenth-century political thought (particularly
Adams's thought) of the classical political theory of forms of government
and balanced government associated with Aristotle and Polybius, does the
use of terminology such as "monarchic" (shorthand for the pure form of rule
by one person) equate with an endorsement of monarchy? I hardly think so.
To be captious for a moment, Gordon S. Wood's emphatic and repeated use of
monarchic as a term to describe colonial society in THE RADICALISM OF THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION surely does not make him a monarchist.

Richard B. Bernstein
Adjunct Professor, New York Law School
Daniel M. Lyons Visiting Professor in American History, Brooklyn
College/CUNY (1997-1998)
Assistant Book Review Editor for Constitutional History, H-LAW
< rbernstein@nyls.edu >

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Gutzman)
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 10:12:22 -0600


From: Constantine Gutzman < krg2a@server1.mail.virginia.edu >
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Appleby)
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 10:37:40 -0500 ()

[Joyce Appleby wrote:]

> I too have spent hours going through John Adams' long polemic against
> democracy, A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED
> STATES OF AMERICA. The passage Richard Rosenfeld quoted indicating Adams'
> approval of monarchy could be replicated several times. The entire book
> is a defense of the governmental structure balancing the one, the few and
> the many, even though Adams seems to be far more concerned about
> explaining the necessity of an aristocracy than of a monarchy. As Adams
> said of the distinctions he was convinced were inherent in human nature,
> "legislation is not yet perfect enought to alter or to remedy, but by
> making the distinctions themselves legal, and assigning to each its
> share." It wouldn't have taken Jefferson long to get Adams' point.
> Indeed Adams helped him along in the 1787 letter to Jefferson which Bill
> Everdell did not quote in full. There Adams wrote, "Elections, my dear
> sir, Elections to offices which are great objects of Ambition, I look at
> with terror." Might one find a hint of monarchism here?
>
> Joyce Appleby

If one can, Adams certainly wasn't alone in holding to that
kind of "monarchism." Jefferson, for example, in a letter
to Edmund Pendleton written soon after the adoption of
Virginia's constitution of 1776, said that he had never
believed choice by the people to be distinguished by its
wisdom. He therefore recommended Virginia's senate should
be elected indirectly. At other times, he made other
"monarchical" suggestions about the selection of members of
the Virginia senate. He also once declared that it would
be wise to restrict selection of judges of Virginia's
appellate courts to the Virginia appellate bar.
"[A] hint of monarchism?"

In addition, Rossiter's edition of _The Federalist_ lists
several references to "democracy," and if memory serves,
all (both from JM and from AH) are pejorative.

***************************************************************
K.R. Constantine Gutzman
Department of History (804)293-5963
University of Virginia

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Rosenfeld)
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 16:39:30 -0600


Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 17:12:50 -0500
From: "R.N.Rosenfeld" < apiri19-2@idt.net >
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Bernstein)

Richard B. Bernstein writes:

> One afterthought re Joyce Appleby's reading of John Adams's
DEFENCE OF THE
> CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES (1787) -- given the
point... about the persistence in eighteenth-century political thought
(particularly
> Adams's thought) of the classical political theory of forms of government
> and balanced government associated with Aristotle and Polybius, does the
> use of terminology such as "monarchic" (shorthand for the pure form of rule
> by one person) equate with an endorsement of monarchy? I hardly think so.

Au contraire. It is the persistence of Polybius in Adams' thought that
put Adams on the wrong side of Locke (for whom Parliament was supreme).
Furthermore, playing around with the multiordinality of the English
language (e.g. "monarchy" versus "monarchic") is more than an
auto-erotic impulse for historians. It avoids what Republicans knew was
the real-world question - whether Adams' thinking and actions posed a
real threat to the existence of popular government.

> To be captious for a moment, Gordon S. Wood's emphatic and repeated use of
> monarchic as a term to describe colonial society in THE RADICALISM OF THE
> AMERICAN REVOLUTION surely does not make him a monarchist.

No. But that's because, in "Radicalism...", Gordon Wood used the term
"monarchic" as no one in the eighteenth century did.

Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Durey)
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 20:22:34 -0600


Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 10:15:11 +0800
From: mdurey@central.murdoch.edu.au (Michael Durey)
Subject: Re:Monarchism in the 1790s and 1990s

List readers may be interested in this story, which may have some relevance
to the debate on monarchism in the U.S in the 1790s.

Here in Australia we are moving towards a debate on whether to become a
"republic" (we have just been sent voting papers for a preliminary
convention). Last semester I was asked to give a lecture to first-year,
mainly non-history students on the history of republicanism. I began my
lecture by saying that, on the basis of my (limited) historical reading, I
couldn't see what all the fuss was about: the Commonwealth of Australia
was already a republic! We even called ourselves (in historical terms) a
republic (commonwealth). I then whizzed through republicanism from
classical Greece to the U.S federal convention in 40 minutes and was later
thanked by the course coordinator (an American, incidentally), for totally
confusing everyone! What is meant by republicanism here in Australia at
the moment is having an Australian head of state, nothing more, nothing
less. This is in itself ironic, in that the model usually looked to by
republicans here is Ireland, where a citizen of a foreign state has just
been elected head of state! To complicate matters further, most republican
leaders here do not want the head of state elected by the people; they want
him/her chosen by a joint sitting of federal parliament (thus showing
themselves to be closer to the delegates of 1787 than to modern democrats).
To claim that a republic would be more democratic than the current
constitutional monarchy, then to reject direct elections for head of state,
shows that "aristocracy" is alive and well in Australia, if sailing under
another flag.

In the U.S today you now have an elected monarch who has more "unregulated"
power than George III could ever have dreamt of.

Mike Durey Murdoch University Perth Western Australia

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Appleby)
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 22:18:49 -0600


Date: Sun, 2 Nov 1997 17:37:05 -0800 (PST)
From: Joyce Appleby < appleby@history.ucla.edu >
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)

I too have spent hours going through John Adams' long polemic against
democracy, A DEFENCE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA. The passage Richard Rosenfeld quoted indicating Adams'
approval of monarchy could be replicated several times. The entire book
is a defense of the governmental structure balancing the one, the few and
the many, even though Adams seems to be far more concerned about
explaining the necessity of an aristocracy than of a monarchy. As Adams
said of the distinctions he was convinced were inherent in human nature,
"legislation is not yet perfect enought to alter or to remedy, but by
making the distinctions themselves legal, and assigning to each its
share." It wouldn't have taken Jefferson long to get Adams' point.
Indeed Adams helped him along in the 1787 letter to Jefferson which Bill
Everdell did not quote in full. There Adams wrote, "Elections, my dear
sir, Elections to offices which are great objects of Ambition, I look at
with terror." Might one find a hint of monarchism here?

Joyce Appleby

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Rosenfeld)
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 10:07:37 -0600


Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 09:37:54 -0500
From: "R.N.Rosenfeld" < apiri19-2@idt.net >
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)

>
> From: Everdell@aol.com
> Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 07:34:32 -0500 (EST)
> REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Appleby)
>
> Joyce Appleby writes describing Adams's DEFENCE as "a defense of the
> governmental structure balancing the one, the few and the many, even though
> Adams seems to be far more concerned about explaining the necessity of an
> aristocracy than of a monarchy."
>
> I'm convinced of this. What's missing is the conclusion... that this
balance is
> required in order to prevent rule by one person -- monarchy... What I
see is a fear of monarchism arising from democratic
> consent to the ambitions of the great...
> One might "find a hint of monarchism" in the DEFENCE. People certainly
> did; but they were, I think, misreading either monarchism or Adams.

John Adams did not favor a balance between democracy, aristocracy, and
monarchy to protect democracy. He wrote "Thoughts on Government" to thwart
Paine's proposal, in "Common Sense," for a pure democracy, and he wrote his
"Defence of the Constitutions, etc." to counter the Shaysites' proposals
for a pure democracy for Massachusetts (i.e. Shaysite proposals in the
Hampshire County conventions to revise Adams' Massachusetts constitution to
mimic Franklin's very democratic constitution for Pennsylvania).

In his own self-serving revisionism, "Honest" John Adams later protests
that he had advocated a bicameral legislature to prevent aristocracy from
imposing on democracy, but that doesn't square with the facts. Adams
started writing on the forms of government in 1776 ("Thoughts on
Government") to counter Paine's proposals for a purely democratic,
unicameral government (in "Common Sense"). Adams condemned Paine's motive
as "a mere desire to please the democratic Party..." Butterfield, ed., "The
Adams Papers; Diary and Autobiography...," III, 332.

Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Gutzman)
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 10:09:24 -0600


From: Constantine Gutzman < krg2a@server1.mail.virginia.edu >
Subject: Adams as "monarchist"
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 09:50:36 -0500 ()

I should add to my previous post concerning Jefferson's objections to the
Virginia constitution of 1776 that he noted theoretical objections to the
Virginia Senate seemingly in consonance with Adams' views. Jefferson said
the Senate was objectionable as it stood because since it was drawn from
the same people on the same basis, Virginians did not obtain the benefits
of bicameralism: two houses representing different principles/cohorts.
This sounds precisely like a desire to insure that the many be counterposed
to the few.

******************************************
K.R. Constantine Gutzman
Dept. of History
University of Virginia
(804)293-5963

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Bernstein)
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 10:11:23 -0600


Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 10:42:32 -0800
From: "Richard B. Bernstein" < rbernstein@nyls.edu >
Subject: Politics of the 1790s

Just one more attempt: Political theorists of the late eighteenth century
used certain terms as terms of art, without any thought that they were
endorsing a particular form of government. And the term "monarchy" or
"monarchic principle" (that is, rule by one man, which is the broad
definition that most political theorists of the era used) is fundamentally
different from a specific endorsement of monarchy. I don't think that any
historian who recognizes this conceptual framework of classical political
thought is either engaging in intellectual auto-eroticism or masking the
political realities of the 1790s.

Furthermore: The entire course of Jefferson's constitutional thought, as
adumbrated most recently by David Mayer in THE CONSTITUTIONAL THOUGHT OF
THOMAS JEFFERSON (Univ. of Virginia Press, 1994), shows that Jefferson
always envisaged a legislature as being bicameral, and always insisted on a
vigorous executive; he consistently promoted his objections to the 1776
Virginia constitution at the time it was framed and adopted, in his NOTES
ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA (published London 1787), and as late as his 1816
letters to Samuel Kercheval. His preferred design for a republican
constitution resembles that offered by John Adams in his 1776 pamphlet
THOUGHTS ON GOVERNMENT.

Richard B. Bernstein
Adjunct Professor, New York Law School
Daniel M. Lyons Visiting Professor in American History,
Brooklyn College/CUNY (1997-1998)
Assistant Book Review Editor for Constitutional History, H-LAW
< rbernstein@nyls.edu >

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Rosenfeld)
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 07:10:55 -0600


Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 23:02:28 -0500
From: "R.N.Rosenfeld" < apiri19-2@idt.net >
Subject: Re: REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)

Bill Everdell writes:

> You generalize too quickly. I'm working on one point, Adams's monarchism
> -- or his reputation for monarchism.

Hardly a small point. If one accepts the idea that men like Adams and
Hamilton were really monarchists who were willing to sacrifice the elective
principle on the slightest provocation, one has to reinterpret the events
of the Federalist era to weight the argument substantially on the side of
the Republicans. This has not been the way "objective" historians have
written American history, which is why, among other reasons, I wrote
American Aurora.

Bill Everdell further writes:

> The "single line" you offer me:
>
> "The Lacedaemonian government... had the three essential parts of the best
> possible government; it was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and
> democracy."
>
> is better adduced for my view than yours. Adams believed at the time of
> writing _Defence_ that a republic, which he defined as a government of
> more than one person out of Johnson's _Dictionary_, was a somewhat
> unstable form best preserved by the ancient means of "mixed government,"
> mixed by combining the three ancient forms of government by one, by few,
> and by many.

Joyce Appleby has given the response I would have given, leaving me only to
add:

Johnson's Dictionary actually defined "Republican" as "One who thinks a
commonwealth without monarchy is the best government."

During his presidency, John Adams gave his own definition of Republican
Government (in his Reply to the Inhabitants of Rutland, Vermont as quoted
in the Gazette of United States, July 3, 1798): "The words 'Republican
Government' have imposed on many who had very imperfect ideas under them -
[A]s there are none in our language more indeterminate, they may be
interpreted to mean anything."

Thomas Jefferson countered, "[I]nstead of saying, as has been said, 'that
it may mean anything or nothing,' we may say with truth and meaning that
republican governments are more or less republican as they have more or
less of the element of popular election or control in their composition;
and believing... that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are
less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to
that composition of government which has the most of this ingredient." (TJ
to John Taylor, May 28, 1816).

In the same letter, Jefferson wrote, "In the General Government, the House
of Representatives is mainly republican; the Senate scarcely so at all, as
not elected by the people directly and so long secured against those who do
elect them..."

In American Aurora, I offer some reportage that, following his return from
France, Jefferson was a unicameralist and so a full-fledged follower of
Paine and Franklin.

Richard N. Rosenfeld
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Everdell)
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 07:21:18 -0600


From: Everdell@aol.com
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 07:34:32 -0500 (EST)
REPLY: Politics of the 1790s (Appleby)

Joyce Appleby writes describing Adams's DEFENCE as "a defense of the
governmental structure balancing the one, the few and the many, even though
Adams seems to be far more concerned about explaining the necessity of an
aristocracy than of a monarchy."

I'm convinced of this. What's missing is the conclusion that would have
gone without saying in the thought of the 1790s, that this balance is
required in order to prevent rule by one person -- monarchy. It seems
strange now and would have confused some even in the 1790s, because it's a
very old-fashioned approach (in 1790) to one of the oldest problems in
political thought, the apparent cycling of governments from one unmixed
form to another.

As Appleby says, Adams thought some distinctions were inherent in human
nature, or at least bound to arise unless checked -- like aristocracy (rule
by a few). In 1787 his view was that aristocracy was not so bad and that
democracy (rule by the many) was far worse. What was needed was
"legislation [that made] the distinctions themselves legal, and assigning
to each its share." as he made in the Massachusetts Constitution.

When Adams wrote in the 1787 letter to Jefferson that "Elections, my dear
sir, Elections to offices which are great objects of Ambition, I look at
with terror." What I see is a fear of monarchism arising from democratic
consent to the ambitions of the great. In France they call it Bonapartism,
and here I think that old-fashioned New Englander made a rather neat forecast.

One might "find a hint of monarchism" in the DEFENCE. People certainly
did; but they were, I think, misreading either monarchism or Adams.

-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn