The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments฀ The debts I have accumulated can never be adequately acknowledged, much less repaid. But I trust that every scholar knows exactly what I mean, and I am proud to be part of a community of scholars where such debts are never called in. I have been blessed with many great teachers (beginning with my parents ). I doubt, however, that I have had a better one than Chet Hedgecoth, not a historian but a profound influence ever since junior high school. At the University of Tennessee, my thanks especially go to such gifted teachers and mentors as the late Milton Klein (who died just as I was preparing to send the book to press), Jonathan G. Utley, John Bohstedt, Michael McDonald, and Paul Pinckney. The greatest influence exerted on me was that of William Bruce Wheeler. It is a testimony to his skills and ability to inspire that, when I took Bruce’s class in Jeffersonian America as an impressionable twenty-year-old college junior, I knew two things immediately: that I wanted to be a college professor, and that I wanted to specialize in the early republic. Bruce Wheeler’s teaching, his example, and his enthusiasm inspired me tremendously. He, more than any other single person, is the reason I decided to become a professional historian. As a graduate student at the University of Kentucky I came under the tutelage of another great group of scholars and teachers. Thanks go to George Herring, Daniel Blake Smith, Tom Cogswell, Mark Summers, and David Hamilton in particular for their instruction, guidance, support, and friendship. I went to Kentucky in the first place to work with Lance Banning . Lance is as fine a scholar as there is, but he may be, through instruction as well as example, even better as a graduate mentor. Lance was the ideal x฀acknowledgments dissertation director—sympathetic and encouraging, yet demanding. He seemed to know with unerring timing when to be patient and allow me to think things through and when to prod me for more chapters. Since the completion of my dissertation he continues to provide invaluable advice, most of which I have followed. I am proud and grateful to have worked with Lance, just as I am now pleased to call him a friend. At Oakland University, I wish in particular to acknowledge the practical and moral support of department chairs Ron Finucane and Carl Osthaus. My colleagues Karen Miller, Bruce Zellers, Dan Clark, Sara Chapman, and Roy Kotynek either read portions of or discussed the book in its various stages and indulged me in long, valuable conversations about political culture . Several colleagues I haven’t named provided help, guidance, and encouragement along the way. To all of them, my deepest thanks for making the Department of History a good place to work. I also wish to acknowledge the timely and generous financial support provided by the Oakland University Research Office and by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. I have also benefited enormously from the help of many friends in the profession, some of whom have served as commentators of my work on conference panels and/or have read parts of my work. In particular I thank Susan Branson, Andrew R. L. Cayton, Joanne Freeman, Philip Gould, Matthew Rainbow Hale, Donald Hickey, Owen Ireland, Albrecht Koschnik, Cathy Matson, Paul Douglas Newman, Jeff Pasley, William Pencak, Herbert Sloan, Mark A. Smith, David Waldstreicher, and Alfred Young. I’m particularly grateful to Joanne Freeman, not only for being (with Mark Smith) a charter member of the Fisher Ames Society and coauthor of “The Ames-iad,” but mostly for her friendship and for the fun (and funny) times that always ensue whenever we attend the same conferences. And I am grateful to audiences at the regular meetings of the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, New England Historical Association, Newberry Library Seminar in Early American History, and other venues at which aspects of this work were presented and discussed. Other friends, some academics, many not, have helped me along the way, too—sometimes by discussing my work, often (happily) by discussing things completely unrelated. I especially thank Rosalind Remer and Jim Green, Steve Ealy, Kathie and Marv Ninneman, Roger Tilden, Don and Elsie Overy, Arline Gaudet, and my brother, Lane Estes, who was always ฀฀acknowledgments฀฀xi ready to...