Rhetoric and the Republic: Politics, Civic Discourse, and Education in Early America

1. One Republic, Many Republicanisms: Early American Political Discourse and Publicity

1 One Republic, Many Republicanisms Early American Political Discourse and Publicity If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect. —Benjamin Franklin Given the impact that republican political discourse had on early American public argument, and given the hegemonic articulations among dominant rhetorical norms, a common political discourse, and a variety of rhetorical pedagogies, it is ¤tting to begin a study of eighteenth-century rhetorical education not with education at all but with two signi¤cant and related factors: republicanism and public argument. If early Americans imagined themselves as republican citizens and if they engaged one another through a common republican vocabulary, then they also would have created curricula to prepare future citizens for similar engagement in a similar vocabulary .1 Exploring the perimeters of republicanism and public argument , therefore, sets the stage for subsequent chapters that explore how this political discourse was articulated not only to rhetorical norms of public exchange but also to efforts at preparing young citizens for their civic lives. This ¤rst chapter, to an extent, accepts the scholarly consensus that republicanism was a principal factor in early American public debate.2 Immediately following, in fact, is an exploration of this discourse’s importance before the American Revolution. However, this chapter also challenges this consensus by considering another factor important to both the creation of early American public discourse and to the formation of early American rhetorical pedagogy. National unity was not just the product of a shared republican discourse. It was also the product of a complicated negotiation among several economic formations. Early American civic identity therefore resulted from a manner of public rhetorical exchange, a political discourse, and a host of economic interests, all interrelated factors that shaped a nation and its efforts to educate citizens. What follows is an exploration of various early American efforts to negotiate con®icting economic interests through a common republican vocabulary. I argue that republican unity was neither a discursive nor an economic effect, and it would be irresponsible to say that republican political discourse was either a psychagogic elixir inducing rhetorical intoxication or a cosmetic powder masking pockmarked economic interests. Rather,republicanism spurred common identi¤cation,provided a sense of common mission, and supplied a vocabulary for understanding national purpose. Republicanism also created a discursive space where citizens could wrestle over their nondiscursive investments in economic institutions such as trade policy, duties, and slavery. If economic factors deserve attention, then rhetorical education of the era did not simply pursue republican ideals nor did it solely endorse republican rhetorical norms. And early American rhetorical education,just like early American public argument , negotiated con®icting economic interests through the common vocabulary that republicanism provided. This chapter proposes that people’s methods of becoming public agents are sites of articulation where actors often connect a commonly held political discourse to norms of rhetorical exchange and to economic and political af¤liations. This contested site of articulation will hereafter be referred to as publicity, a term that I use very differently from its contemporary appropriation.In the following discussion,publicity has nothing to do with the public relations industry, though it does relate to one’s public exposure. Publicity, in my use, is more akin to publicness, a manner of embodying and performing good public citizenship through public argument . But publicity references more than a discursive effect. It references the articulation, through this discursive effort, of economic and partisan af¤liations to a commonly held discourse about good government. A republican publicity, therefore, rhetorically engages in the struggle over 2 / One Republic,Many Republicanisms what it means to be a good republican rhetor. A republican publicity, like a republican pedagogy,is not a consistent practice.Rather,at any moment, one might encounter several con®icting republican publicities, individual efforts to articulate a host of factors (some rhetorical, some economic) to a common political discourse in the hopes of suturing these connections into a hegemonic fabric that others will accept as the only manner of publicly ,rhetorically enacting good republican argumentation.In order to explore republican publicity as a contested site of articulation,this book will begin with the common rhetorical ground that all republican publicities share: republican political discourse. It will then explore the economic factors at play in early American society to demonstrate how various arguments about republican citizenship were tied to these con®icting interests while employing the same publicly accepted discourse about what...