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

4. King’s College/Columbia and the College of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania, 1754–1800

4 King’s College/Columbia and the College of Philadelphia/University of Pennsylvania,1754–1800 T’ inform young Minds and mold the ductile Heart To worthiest Thoughts of GOD and social Deeds. For Education the great Fountain is From whence Life’s Stream, must clear or turbid ®ow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ah me! how long! Shall Party-Zeal, and little sneaking Views, of vile Self-Interest, our chief Thoughts engross, And dim our Fires? —William Smith In 1794, Timothy Dwight looked at the small New England town of Green¤eld Hill, its uniformity of manners, its austerity, its bucolic humility , and its abstemious commerce. This was his vision for a new republic , and it stands in stark contrast to what Jacob Duché witnessed through the panes of his Philadelphia window just twenty years prior:“Whilst I am writing this, three topsail vessels, wafted along by a gentle southern breeze are passing by my window. The voice of industry perpetually resounds along the shore; and every wharf within my view is surrounded by graves of masts, and heaped with commodities of every kind, from almost every quarter of the globe” (Observations 3–4). The difference between Dwight’s Green¤eld Hill and Duché’s Philadelphia is also the difference between Yale and the two colleges discussed in this chapter. The struggle for hegemony in New Haven was largely affected by tension between a residual Puritan social formation and an emerging capitalism and cosmopolitanism.In Philadelphia and New York, capitalism was dominant by the mid-eighteenth century. A thriving cosmopolitan culture had sprouted by the 1750s. Reserved Protestants readily threw off their plain clothes and their simple pleasures.Even once austere Quaker merchants traded their black coats fastened by hooks and eyes for colorfully embroidered waistcoats, lace, and powdered wigs. The desire to imitate British aristocracy led some urban inhabitants to build country houses for weekend excursions. The coach manufacturing industry blossomed in the colonies as estates appeared around Boston, Newport, and Philadelphia. Dancing and the theater, lascivious abominations in most Puritan imaginations, became not only common but also popular. Philadelphia ’s dancing assembly, the most successful in the colonies, began in 1740 and peaked in 1759. The most ®ourishing urban institution in the mid-eighteenth century was not the somber church but the promiscuous tavern. When that locale became too popularly attended, coffeehouses accommodated the exclusivity desired by exceptionally distinguished socialites (Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt 146–65). Urban capitalists in New York and Philadelphia tended to favor British government because they bene¤ted from its trade laws. These citizens were also typically social climbers.In order to distinguish themselves,they performed (an often clumsy) colonial imitation of British gentility. They also used their wealth and family connections to secure political power and to maintain economic dominance. In Philadelphia, as mentioned in chapter 1, the established commercial class formed the Proprietary Party and remained loyalists as the Revolution drew near. In New York, established genteel capitalists united under governors James Delancey and his son James Delancey Jr. In Philadelphia, other capitalists, those not yet enjoying social or economic security, formed the Anti-Proprietary Party, the chief opposition,under Benjamin Franklin.Likewise in New York,the principal opposition to the Delancey Party in the 1760s were the Sons of Liberty, lesser merchants, craftspeople, and shopkeepers who resented the elite’s presence, their dominance in government, and their stranglehold on New York’s trade (Tiedemann 32–40). 136 / King’s College The tension between these two groups is re®ected in various cultural developments. The established bourgeoisie adopted gentility, the culture of European aristocracy,and held the social high ground through the early nineteenth century. Even elected leaders in the early republic sought the veneer of cultural re¤nement. The ¤rst two Federalist administrations kept the center of American government in the gentri¤ed city of Philadelphia . Only the austere Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson was willing to move the nation’s capital to Washington, D.C., where there were no dancing halls. Yet the new capital was not devoid of aristocratic pretense. The city was designed by Pierre Charles l’Enfant to resemble, initsgenerallayoutandwidestreets,thebaroquecourtlycityofVersailles; it was built, like Versailles, principally by slave labor. The city’s architecture , however, was austere, and the streets were unpaved. The buildings had simple facades, re®ecting clean Roman simplicity more than French courtly majesty (Elkins and McKitrick 46–47, 179–82). Early Americans might not have had Europe...