The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson. By Norman K. Risjord. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965. Pp. ix, 340. $7.95. ) This is a narrative history of a political position, or a set of political attitudes, properly called Old Republicanism. Professor Risjord begins his story with the perfection of "pure Republicanism" in the crisis year of 1798; most of his book, like the great history of Henry Adams, surveys the presidencies of the Virginia Dynasty. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe labored in the 1790's to perfect "pure Republicanism" as a defense against Federalist abuses. As Presidents and Cabinet members they resorted often enough to more constructive political measures than their old defensive doctrines allowed. Risjord's Old Republicans were the men who challenged these Virginians in their departure from purity. The Old Republicans believed in a small and parsimonious federal government , in defense by militia rather than by standing army, and in the military uselessness and political wickedness of a navy. They opposed centralizing programs such as national banking, internal improvements, and protective tariffs. Their sustained principle was to limit and minimize the power of government; theirs was a bleak view of human nature in politics, or at least of natures other than their own. John Randolph was their censor, John Taylor of Caroline their political philosopher, Spencer Roane their legalist, and, after outgrowing his wartime nationalism, Thomas Ritchie, their journalist. Old Republicans appealed repeatedly to the strict construction of the Constitution. But, though Professor Risjord does not put it this way, his evidence proves that state sovereignty was of prior importance. The Constitution prescribes many areas in which the national government may in perfect legality override the states. To Old Republicans this fact about the Constitution was so distressing as finally to be inadmissible. The hallowed Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions themselves were a gloss on the Constitution, assuming much not stated there. It was the doctrine of the prior and sufficient sovereignty of states that gave them force. Though approving many of the early acts of Jefferson's first administration , the Old Republicans were otherwise almost always voting nay. Their ranks increased during Jefferson's second administration, diminished during the crisis and war with Britain, increased again as part of a southern reaction to postwar nationalism, and finally dissipated in the political regroupings of the Adams and Jackson years. Only the purest Old Repub363 364CIVIL WAR HISTORY licans could resist the patriotic urges to increase the national domain and to defend American rights against British transgressions; but the postwar nationalism of Clay and Calhoun and the bold series of Supreme Court decisions by John Marshall succeeded in restoring Jefferson himself to virtue. The history of these years is normally told from the point of view of those who were doing things. Professor Risjord gives us an interesting review of the Virginia Dynasty from the quite different viewpoint of those normally opposed to doing things. He cautiously gives credit to the Old Republicans for shaping the tradition of American laissez faire, with its love of individual liberty and its suspicion of government. He notes, but perhaps understates, the antimajoritarian, antidemocratic, antinationalist, and, finally, proslavery bent of Old Republicanism. Robert McColley University of Illinois Turner, Bolton, and Webb: Three Historians of the American Frontier . By Wilbur R. Jacobs, John W. Caughey, and Joe B. Frantz. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1965. Pp. xiii, 113. $2.95.) In the historiography of the American West, the names of Frederick Jackson Turner, Herbert Eugene Bolton, and Walter Prescott Webb stand out conspicuously, like great oaks towering over the rest of the forest. In their classrooms and with their pens, these stimulating scholars set in motion fresh interpretations that would leave a deep imprint on American historical thinking. Turner's thesis of the significance of the frontier in shaping American development undoubtedly made him one of the most influential (and controversial) American historians of all time. Bolton's concept of the Spanish Borderlands and of hemispheric unity once seemed destined to revolutionize the study of the West and of Latin America, although its promise was never fully realized. Webb's focus on the forces of environment as a shaper...