Enemyship: Democracy and Counter-Revolution in the Early Republic (review)

Humanity's preoccupation with notions of friends and enemies is ancient, with roots in politics, religion, and perhaps even human nature itself. Jeremy Engels argues that, although scholars have done important work on related topics such as the roles of war and peace, counterrevolution, violence, and dissent in early U.S. history, a study is needed that highlights the rhetorical nature of enemy-making. Enemyship is thus both a work of rhetorical criticism and deft historical analysis, that "engage[s] a critical moment in the development of American political and rhetorical traditions" (45). Looking at the same formative moments as scholars before him, Engels's contribution lies in illuminating how the earliest U.S. leaders and citizens used the rhetorical tool of enemy-making not only to argue for revolution, but also as a "technique of governing" (215).

Enemyship, as Engels defines it, is "a bond of mutual antagonism for an enemy, resulting in a solidarity of fear, a community of spite, a kinship in arms, and a brotherhood of hatred" that "signifies the many ways that political actors name the enemy in order to achieve desirable rhetorical effects" (13). As a rhetorical tool, enemyship operates in three stages. First, the enemy is named and defined. Next, communication with the enemy is made to seem impossible or is categorically eliminated. Finally, with communication no longer an option, the situation is escalated to the level of crisis, as "rhetors deploy the discourses of fear, paranoia, and anxiety to focus their audience's thoughts on how best to defend themselves and their families from the enemy, and how best to exact hurt on the enemy if the chance arises" (22). Enemyship as a rhetorical technique thus has a variety of material effects.

Engels reviews several key moments of conflict in the early Republic that pitted commoners against political elites, the poor against the wealthy, and those hungry for democracy against the forces of demophobia. In each of these moments, Engels illustrates how the rhetorical technique of enemyship served to subdue unrest by focusing attention on an enemy to unite a diverse and divergent population. As a creative work, Enemyship thus weaves a coherent narrative that helps the reader understand how some of the more troubling power dynamics that plague contemporary U.S. politics and governance were first established through the rhetorical strategy of enemyship.

In chapter 1, Engels outlines a rhetorical theory of enemyship using Paine's Common Sense to demonstrate how the punitive potential of enemyship is foreshadowed in subsequent editions of the famous pamphlet. What began as an attempt to unite the disparate colonists around a common enemy, Great Britain, soon turned into "a weapon [Paine used] to silence his critics" (63). As Engels observes, one of the great problems of pursuing a strategy of enemyship was that neat rhetorical constructions never quite matched up with reality. There would always be dissenters to any proposal or scheme that would disrupt the "perfect antithesis of friend and enemy," and thus, under the logic of enemyship, necessarily needed to be eliminated (65).

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 all focus on the consequences of the imperfect delineation between friend and enemy in early U.S. history, with particular regard for the unique challenges posed to this strategy by the transition from the language of revolution to the language of government. As Engels observes, this transition was rocky in no small part because of the powerful and pervasive nature of revolutionary rhetoric. A motley crew of poor farmers and merchants, free blacks, slaves, and other individuals who fell into the category of "common people" had been inspired by the language of revolutionary doctrines like the Declaration of Independence and Common Sense to yearn for the freedoms of democratic government. However, propertied elites, including all of the individuals commonly thought of as the nation's founding fathers, possessed an intense fear of the leveling potential of democracy, worrying that if given their way, the masses...