Slavery and the Democratic Conscience
EARLY AMERICAN STUDIES
Series editors:
Daniel K. Richter, Kathleen M. Brown, Max Cavitch, and David Waldstreicher
Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture, Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about 1600 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
SLAVERY AND THE DEMOCRATIC CONSCIENCE
Political Life in Jeffersonian America
Padraig Riley
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2016 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Riley, Padraig, author.
Slavery and the democratic conscience : political life in Jeffersonian America / Padraig Riley.
pages cm — (Early American studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4749-7 (alk. paper)
1. Slavery—Political aspects—United States—History. 2. Republican Party (U.S. : 1792–1828)—History. 3. Federal Party (U.S.)—History. 4. Political parties—United States—History. 5. United States—Politics and government—1789–1809. 6. United States—Politics and government—1809–1817. 7. United States—Politics and government—1817–1825. 8. Jefferson, Thomas, 1743–1826. I. Title. II. Series: Early American studies.
E446.R55 2016
306.3'620973—dc23
2015017224
To Boo
CONTENTS
Introduction. North of Jefferson
Chapter 1. The Emancipation of New England
Chapter 2. Philadelphia, Crossroads of Democracy
Chapter 3. Jeffersonians Go to Washington
Chapter 4. The Idea of a Northern Party
Chapter 5. Republican Nation: The War of 1812
Chapter 6. Democracy in Crisis
Conclusion. Democracy, Race, Nation
INTRODUCTION
North of Jefferson
The Problem
Historians and the wider public continue to be fascinated by Thomas Jefferson, who seems to embody a fundamental American contradiction. An advocate of republican government, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and given at times to ideological musings that bordered on the anarchic, Jefferson also owned hundreds of slaves, had a long-term affair with his bondwoman Sally Hemings, and, like most slaveholders, considered the birth of slave children “an addition to capital.”1 Driven by hagiography, criticism, and, more often than not, the passion engendered by his many contradictions, scholars continue to study Jefferson’s life and voluminous correspondence, hoping to discover some fundamental truth about the American political order, about the vexed relationship between liberty, power, and race that runs throughout the history of the United States.
But for all the attention devoted to Thomas Jefferson, there has been surprisingly less analysis of the problem of slavery within the Democratic-Republican party, the political coalition that elected Jefferson president of the United States in 1800. Jeffersonian democracy, far more so than Jefferson’s personality, shaped the long-term relationship between freedom and slavery in American history. As a political movement, it brought together northerners and southerners, gentry elites and men on the rise, evangelicals and freethinkers, cosmopolitans and nationalists, and, most crucially of all, democrats and slaveholders. The Democratic-Republican coalition united the vanguard of democratization in the northern states and the most adamant representatives of southern mastery. Men who believed the United States should be a beacon of democracy for a world enslaved by aristocratic power became the political allies of men who believed the United States was obliged to protect a master’s right to enslave. This diverse composition was torn at times by sectional and ideological conflict, but it consistently found unity in American nationalism and the political aspirations of white men. And that unity proved essential to the preservation of slavery in a democratizing polity.
