Dread Barbarism and the Pursuit of Power: American Whig Thought and The Purpose of the Past

“In such condition, there is no place for Industry…no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

—Thomas Hobbes

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe.And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;And thereby hangs a tale.

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Henry Adams was half right when he observed that “of all the parties that have existed in the United States, the famous Whig party was the most feeble in ideas and most blundering in its management.” Often snake-bit with bad luck and bad timing, the Whigs never achieved the electoral success of their opponents, the Jacksonian Democrats. Yet Whiggery was rich with ideas, and Whigs saw their world in middle-class terms of what it might become. Firmly focused on the future, they wanted to build a modern nation, linked by improved transportation, economic opportunity, and sober habits. Whigs cherished order, nurtured success built by striving, and feared the day when public appetites slipped the collar of prudence. Comfortable in most respects with the dynamic world around them, Whigs often tried to speed up change.

The Whigs, of course, were one of the two great political parties in the United States between the years 1834 and 1856, battling their Jacksonian Democratic opponents for offices, prestige, and power. Boasting such famous members as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and William Henry Seward, Whigs supported tariffs, banks, internal improvements, moral reform, and public education.

The aspirational, striving nature of Whigs’ political thought repelled their Democratic opponents. Democrats did not trust Whigs’ plans, nor did they believe Whigs’ assessment of human depravity and the need to constantly collaborate. Instead, they saw coercion and control in Whigs’ efforts to push public cooperation forward through social organizations and the state. They feared this sort of oppression most of all. Jacksonians were nostalgic for a past that they felt slipping away and afraid of a future they could not predict or control. Jacksonian Democrats worried about the loss of personal autonomy and local independence due to the slippery scheming of distant financiers and their lackeys in government. They understood liberty in stark, intimate terms, and because their faith in good government was small, they worried constantly about its loss. Most Democrats would agree with Thomas Jefferson that “the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” Consequently, Democrats embraced a caustic, confrontational political style geared toward breaking down perceived artificial privileges and concentrated on limiting the reach, power, and scope of all levels of government. Jacksonians were troubled by a world that seemed to be changing too much too fast.¹

George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879), a Whig politician and artist, created an elegant window into the rough and rowdy world of antebellum politics in his painting Stump Speaking (1853–1854).

saint louis art museum

American Whigs were forward-looking, valuing progress over nostalgia. Yet Whiggery also represented America’s first middle-class political culture, and their shared need for prudence meant the past still mattered. Thus, when Whigs considered the deep past, they typically did not ponder America’s colonial experience. Instead, they looked back to the Middle Ages and saw a barbaric world. For Whigs, the past’s barbarism meant a lack of self-control, prudence, and restraint. If they often longed for community in an age of individualism, they were not nostalgic for thatch-hutted villages, privileged aristocrats, dissolute clergy, or lordly kings. This point of view united Whigs from Maine to Mississippi, and all across the Ohio Valley as well, in a shared notion of both what they were for and what they were against.

Whigs did not share Democrats’ dreams of a simpler time, because in the past they saw a world that was everything they did not want to be. Consequently, Whigs believed contemporary life...