The Varieties of Deference in Eighteenth-Century America

Epigraphs: Some Election Day Commentaries

Sheriff: Gentlemen Freeholders, come into court, and give your votes, or the poll will be closed.

Freeholders: We've all voted.

Sheriff: The Poll's Closed, Mr. Wou'dbe and Mr. Worthy are elected.

Freeholders: Huzza—huzza! Wou'dbe and Worthy for ever boys, bring 'em on, bring 'em on. Woud'be and Worthy for ever!

Worthy: I'm much obliged to you for the signal proof you have given me to-day of your regard. You may depend upon it, that I shall endeavor faithfully to discharge the trust you have reposed in me.

Wou'dbe: I have not only, gentlemen, to return you my hearty thanks for the favours you have conferred upon me, but I beg leave also to thank you for shewing such regard to the merit of my friend. You have in that, shewn your judgment, and a spirit of independence becoming Virginians.

Robert Munford, The Candidates (1770)

The election was unanimous and will I hope always be such, as making parties and divisions among the inhabitants can never be for their interest.

Sir William Johnston to H. Glen, December 28, 1772, reporting on results of Tryon County election to the New York General Assembly.

Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), September 22, 1773

Report of the Committee on Privileges and Elections Virginia House of Burgesses, March 8, 1758

If their Seats [had] been fill'd with Presbyterians, we should inevitably have been in a much worse condition; for it is very evident, from undeniable Facts, that they are by no Means proper Men to hold the Reins of Government, either in War or Peace. They are responsible for all manner of depredation, including the murder of Men, Women and Children in . . . much the same Manner their Offspring murder'd the Indians at Lancaster.

Isaac Hunt, A Looking-Glass for Presbyterians (Philadelphia, 1765)

Prolegomenon

My purpose in this essay is to discuss some of the interpretive trends within our discipline that brought the term "deference" into frequent use in our historical vocabulary; to offer a few words of appreciation for the ways in which the concept of deference has helped to improve our understanding of eighteenth-century American society and politics; to identify some of the slipperiness of that concept as it has come into greater currency among historians of early America; and finally, by the use of some selected examples, to illustrate why that concept simply may have become too slippery to be very useful in helping us understand social and political relations in the eighteenth-century world.¹ And I begin with one important caveat—although the concept of deference is a broadly social one—that is, its meaning is best comprehended when we view it in the context of social relations among men and women in early America—my own interest in the concept has always been primarily about the way in which that concept works (or does not work) within the political realm. Therefore, most of the evidence that I will bring forward in this essay will come from the political realm.

I begin with an oft-quoted, indeed, nearly clichéd, bit of wisdom from that Scottish sage, David Hume: "Nothing is more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye," Hume wrote in 1758, "than to see the ways with which the many are governed by the few; and to observe the implicite submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is brought about, we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. 'Tis therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular."²

It may be that the force and insight of Hume's observation are felt more keenly by historians of my generation—that is to say, those of us who became serious students...