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V. A People's Aristocracy
- University of Virginia Press
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214 culture and liberty in the age of the american revolution internally incoherent. Far from an incongruity, the simultaneous lionization and fear of common people were part and parcel of the Founders’ grand vision, which needed both in order to maintain its overall coherence. An enlightened justification of the new state required a symbolic inclusion of the masses. On the other hand, perceptions of the common people as often uncivil and dangerous were indispensable to elite claims to authority and privileged liberty—both needed to keep the mobile vulgus in check. Short of descending to ahistoricism, it is not possible to explain the coexistence of these two views as a case of irony, because early modern elites never embraced a world view where ordinary people were equal to them in the first place. Their commitment to inequality was in easy agreement with their understanding of liberty as an entitlement for some, rather than a right of all. In fact, their fervent dedication to liberty cannot be fully understood without realizing that it was simultaneously a commitment to their own distinction and preeminence. Although by the mid-1780s the rulers were still referring to the common crowd, or mob, as if it occupied an entirely separate cultural space, in real life they were now beginning to talk to them, adjust the language to their needs, make more frequent appeals to them, sound out their sentiments , and at times seek their direct support. As an upper-class Bostonian, resigned to this reality, put it, ‘‘We must consult the rooted prejudices [of ordinary people] if we expect their concurrence in our propositions.’’ The key word was ‘‘must.’’ It is not likely that the word would have been used this context before the Revolution.∏∂ V. A People’s Aristocracy Merit is the criterion of eminence. —Simeon Baldwin, An Oration, 1788 One of the responses of the American political elite to the postRevolutionary crisis of their identity was an attempt at a conceptual substitution of ‘‘natural aristocracy,’’ or ‘‘aristocracy of merit,’’ for the earlier ‘‘gentry,’’ ‘‘aristocracy,’’ ‘‘better sort,’’ and other collective terms signifying the upper class. The new situation called for a usable notion that would accom- usurpers and dupes 215 modate both the primacy of the newly sovereign people and the existence of an elite. The notion of an aristocracy of merit satisfied this requirement more than well, which helps explain why it was promoted enthusiastically across political party lines, and soon became part and parcel of the new government ’s self-portrayal. It was firmly rooted in the tradition of the elite’s ‘‘natural ’’ preeminence, and yet it rejected inherited advantage. It carried a basically egalitarian suggestion that anyone could rise in social rank through individual e√ort. It emphasized the continued indispensability of an educated elite. It also revalidated the gentry as a class, and did it with good grace by implying that they were essentially of the people, and that their elevated rank was entirely due to personal achievement, and not privilege. At the same time, it upheld social distinctions and set o√ the elite from ordinary people. Why would the ruling class make the e√ort to reinvent themselves as a new kind of elite? After the war, many still held economic wealth (which supplied the means to act on the public stage) and continued to occupy positions of power. With the monarchy—the main barrier to their local authority—removed, they dominated the political scene. Some scholars have suggested that natural aristocracy was fashioned because of the weakness of the American upper class. But a class that organized and led the Revolution, took the reins of government after its success, and wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was not weak. What they lacked at this point in time was legitimacy in a political order turned upside down. The ownership of acres of tobacco-producing land could not in itself categorize one as a member of the elite, nor justify one’s high position in society. Only perceptions which translated such objective realities into valid signs of authority in the collective mind could achieve that. Self-fashioning was the means to perform such a conversion.∏∑ The fashioners already had a huge advantage in their ability to create and popularize such representations, and yet they could at no time a√ord to cease doing so, because as the social, economic, and political environment around them changed, the need to signal and confirm...