Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution

II. Party Struggles and the Expansion of Liberty

178 culture and liberty in the age of the american revolution which could be a√orded consistent with equal justice and the dignity of government.’’ A year later, after the fall of the Shaysites, George Minot summed up the treatment of the rebels as a case of a great ‘‘lenity of government ’’ that ‘‘must attach every man to a Constitution . . . which governs its subjects without oppression and reclaims them without severity.’’∞Ω The question, posed earlier, whether the rulers contradicted their own ideology is out of place in this story. Once Revolutionary rebels became the ruling elite, their roles were switched; while they held on to the founding language of liberty to frame political issues, they returned to the role of the establishment, albeit an altered one, and defending the status quo became their primary goal. This is one of the classical patterns in history: any order, once established, can be expected to take on those who oppose it. The seeming paradox of the Revolutionary radical Samuel Adams calling for the execution of the post-Revolutionary radical Daniel Shays was no paradox at all. What was truly novel was the tangible expansion of the meaning and usages of the Revolutionary language of liberty. II. Party Struggles and the Expansion of Liberty The very idea of the power and the right of the People to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government . All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and Associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, controul, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the Constituted authorities are destructive to this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve . . . to put in place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party. —George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796 If shays’s rebellion demonstrated how the Revolutionary liberty talk was being picked up by non-elites in the pursuit of their own goals, the years that followed it witnessed further changes in political culture that pushed the now popular language of freedom even further away from its usurpers and dupes 179 former, restrictive connotations. These changes took place as a result of factionalism—a seemingly odd development considering that the Founders reviled and denounced it as the main threat to liberty in America. ‘‘Party’’ was a dirty word; Madison was willing to acknowledge only one type of party division, that between friends and enemies of the United States, between those who supported ‘‘republican policy’’ and those who stood for the ‘‘spirit of usurpation and monarchy.’’ But intense debates over constitutions, representation , rights, and foreign policy—all enhanced by the flourishing of newspapers—not only amplified divisions between emerging political factions , but also expanded the social composition of their memberships to include increasing numbers of middling and ordinary people. Another source of growing political participation by non-elites was the mobilization of military forces to fight in the Revolutionary War, a process that turned out to be a significant medium of politicizing the population. The Philadelphia militiamen , for instance, on returning from war, organized a pro-independence Committee of Correspondence, while many also became involved in public rallies and street demonstrations demanding economic relief. The perceived radicalism of their demands ultimately produced a conservative backlash, but their vocal presence on the public stage signified a major change that could not be ignored by the political class.≤≠ The emerging factional allegiances served as powerful magnets; they crossed state and regional borders, with perhaps the most radical polarization occurring in the urbanized areas of New England. Public debate was still conducted mostly by members of the elite, but the divisions among them soon percolated into popular culture, as people came to support newspapers, taverns, and even churches, depending on their political loyalties. By the 1790s, most of those who paid attention were able to characterize themselves as ‘‘us’’ versus ‘‘them.’’ These new engagements ran deep, cutting across cities and villages, even families, as in the well-known case of two figures in Dedham , Massachusetts—the lawyer Fisher Ames, a personification of High Federalism , and his Anti-Federalist brother, the physician Nathaniel Ames— both endowed with sharp pens. What until the mid-1780s used to be a fairly robust and stable gentry identity began to fracture. During Washington’s second term, both Federalists and Anti-Federalists, seeking a broader base of support, were forced to allow—and even actively seek—a much greater politicization of...