Gentlemen Revolutionaries: Power and Justice in the New American Republic
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Gentlemen Revolutionaries: Power and Justice in the New American Republic
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Overview
Tom Cutterham examines how, facing pressure from populist movements as well as the threat of foreign empires, these gentlemen argued among themselves to find new ways of justifying economic and political inequality in a republican society. At the heart of their ideology was a regime of property and contract rights derived from the norms of international commerce and eighteenth-century jurisprudence. But these gentlemen were not concerned with property alone. They also sought personal prestige and cultural preeminence. Cutterham describes how, painting the egalitarian freedom of the republic's "lower sort" as dangerous licentiousness, they constructed a vision of proper social order around their own fantasies of power and justice. In pamphlets, speeches, letters, and poetry, they argued that the survival of the republican experiment in the United States depended on the leadership of worthy gentlemen and the obedience of everyone else.
Lively and elegantly written, Gentlemen Revolutionaries demonstrates how these elites, far from giving up their attachment to gentility and privilege, recast the new republic in their own image.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691210100 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2020 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Sales rank: | 795,375 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Gentlemen Revolutionarie
Power and Justice in the New American Republic
By Tom Cutterham
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2017 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-17266-8
CHAPTER 1
Inheritance
Such is the infirmity of human nature, that every appearance of superiority (however necessary to the policy and government of a state) naturally excites sullen suspicion in the breasts of the subordinate.
— STEPHEN MOYLAN, FORMER ARMY COLONEL, 1783
AMERICA'S REVOLUTIONARIES fought under the banner of equality. Deeply rooted in the language of the new republic was the notion that all citizens owed equal service, and were in turn owed equal respect and influence. This language had been passed down from the ancient Greeks and Romans, but it also bore the marks of Renaissance Italian city-republics, and of England's seventeenth-century revolutions. Long before they became rebels against the British crown, Americans had embraced this republican inheritance. Yet however blunt the phrase seems, "all men are created equal," there was a great deal of complexity in how it could be understood. The new United States remained a country of slaveholders. It was a republic built on inequality.
However much they reveled in the symbols and the language of republican equality, those who called themselves gentlemen did not give up their sense of superiority. They did not give up their power over slaves or women, nor the status that set them apart from other men. Struggles over how to understand that status and how to recast it in a revolutionary light began as soon as independence was declared, and they wore on long after it was won. As long as some men possessed what others did not, equality would remain a problematic ideal. And as long as those men desired to keep what they had, and pass it on to their children, there would always be the question of inheritance.
I. The Making of a Gentleman
If there has ever been a natural aristocrat, it was Alexander Hamilton. Everyone who knew him recognized it. He had not been born to wealth or privilege. But as a child growing up on Ste. Croix, a tiny Danish outpost in the Caribbean, those who came in contact with him seemed to know he was not destined to stay where he was. In 1772, the local gentlemen collected enough money and letters of recommendation to send the gifted orphan boy north to the mainland for his education. Five years later, at the age of twenty-two or thereabouts, he was serving at George Washington's right hand, at the heart of the American Revolution. It was there, at camp in the summer of 1777, that Hamilton first met John Laurens — a young man who had all the advantages that Hamilton had not. His father Henry, a slave trader and owner of rice-planting estates in South Carolina, was both rich and extremely influential. John had been trained as a lawyer at the Inns of Court in London, an education reserved for the sons of the most privileged and ambitious colonial families. There could hardly be two men more different in the circumstances of their birth. Yet within a few years, in the midst of revolutionary tumult, Hamilton and Laurens were devoted friends.
They came to know one another in the unique environment of Washington's headquarters, among the staff officers whom the general called his "family." Hamilton and Laurens were particularly close, because they were both fluent French-speakers — one as a result of his elite education in Europe, the other his childhood in the Caribbean — and served together as translators. Hamilton had dropped out of college to become a captain of artillery before he was plucked by the general to serve on his staff. Laurens, on the other hand, took his place with the benefit of his father's influence in Congress. He joined Hamilton and two other aides at camp near Germantown, Philadelphia, in August 1777. It was not a promising moment for the Continental Army. By the end of September, they had suffered a defeat at the Battle of Brandywine — the first engagement in which the two aides served together — and the rebel capital of Pennsylvania had fallen to the British. It was through that winter at Valley Forge, and the following year of campaigning, that the two young men grew close. But it was only when Laurens left on a mission to his native South Carolina, in March 1779, that Alexander had a chance to express the depth of his feeling in writing.
"I wish, my Dear Laurens, it might be in my power, by action rather than words, to convince you that I love you," Hamilton wrote him soon after. "I shall only tell you that 'till you bade us Adieu, I hardly knew the value you had taught my heart to set upon you." He was writing in a way that would have been familiar to any genteel and well-read young man in the late eighteenth century. It was part of what historians now call the culture of sensibility. Gentlemen, as well as ladies, were encouraged to show how sensitive they were to the ties of affection and sympathy. These concepts animated the moral philosophy of many Enlightenment thinkers, but they were also promoted and demonstrated in literature, especially in novels. For a literate and ambitious man like Hamilton, without a fortune or a family to support him, taking part in the culture of sensibility was a way to put himself on the same terms as his well-bred friend. Whatever differences there were between them, both were men of feeling, and that made them both better than ordinary men. "You should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent," Hamilton told Laurens. It was that sensibility that marked him as a gentleman.
During the revolution, while many of the ties that bound society together seemed to be changing or under threat, friendship became an even more important bond. Especially in the army, where men were separated from their families and communities and often in grave danger, it is no surprise that such passionate friendships flourished. At the same time, sensibility was a culture and a language that only officers had access to. Their style of friendship served as just another distinction from the rank and file men — and this sense of separateness also reinforced the bonds between officers themselves. Washington's "family" was only the most prominent example. "All the family send their love," Hamilton would add at the bottom of his letters to Laurens. "All the lads embrace you. The General sends his love." "All the lads remember you as a friend and a brother." One of their number, James McHenry, even began to write "an heroic Poem of which the family are the subject." Like other groups of friends, officers built up a mythology around themselves. Their heroic friendships helped them cope with war and social instability.
For men like Hamilton, it was a time of amazing opportunity. Only the tumultuous effects of the revolution could have allowed him to so quickly gain the responsibility and respectability he achieved as Washington's aide. The Continental Army needed officers, and men with the right talents and ambitions could rise quickly through the ranks. But such an atmosphere of rapid change was also bound to create tension and anxiety — feelings that echoed larger uncertainties about the role of commerce and the rise of mercantile gentlemen. Hamilton and his colleagues paid a great deal of attention to fine distinctions of status. Sometimes he struggled to reconcile his friendship for Laurens with the feelings of resentment and insecurity stirred up by his friend's powerful family. "Though we can all truly say, we love your character, and admire your military merit," Hamilton wrote, after Laurens was offered a promotion, any sign of unfair preference from Congress "cannot fail to give some of us uneasy sensations." Friendship among the family was given a sharp edge by the young men's competition for rank and glory.
They also spent time wondering about their place in wider society. Would their success as officers be enough to secure their reputations and livelihood when the war was over? What was the real and reliable basis of social hierarchy? And what would be the effects of the revolution? "I am a stranger in this country," Hamilton once complained to Laurens. "I have no property here, no connexions. If I have talents and integrity, (as you say I have) these are justly deemed very spurious titles in these enlightened days, when unsupported by others more solid." There was certainly some intended irony in these words. Surely, a truly enlightened time would value personal qualities more than property. But the anxiety Hamilton expressed about his lack of a "more solid" claim to social status was real, too. He was questioning just how enlightened the new revolutionary world would really be. In a society where fortune and family continued to matter a great deal, his talents, integrity, and relationship with the Livingstons back in New York could only take him so far.
The same mixture of playful irony and anxiety about status suffused Hamilton's letters to Laurens, including the one that began the exchange in April 1779. "And Now my Dear as we are upon the subject of wife," Hamilton wrote, "I empower and command you to get me one in Carolina." In expressing his love for his friend, Hamilton had drawn on the literary culture of sensibility. When it came to his future wife, however, he affected a cynical attitude:
She must be young, handsome (I lay most stress upon a good shape) sensible (a little learning will do), well bred (but she must have an aversion to the word ton) chaste and tender (I am an enthusiast in my notions of fidelity and fondness) of some good nature, a great deal of generosity (she must neither love money nor scolding, for I dislike equally a termagent and an œconomist). In politics, I am indifferent what side she may be of; I think I have arguments that will easily convert her to mine. As to religion a moderate stock will satisfy me. She must believe in god and hate a saint. But as to fortune, the larger stock of that the better.
However tongue-in-cheek the shopping list, there was a serious reality behind it. Perhaps the best way to secure the status Hamilton had earned as an officer was indeed to catch himself a "well-bred" wife with a large stock of fortune.
After a while, the letters between Hamilton and Laurens became less playful, and more concerned with matters of military and political strategy. The truth was, Laurens had never found the time to join in with Hamilton's flights of fancy. He was too deeply engaged in the revolutionary struggle in South Carolina, and could spare little time to think about anything else. Laurens' political projects were inspired by his radical hope of abolishing slavery, in spite of his father's own slave-trading fortune — and they made him a deeply controversial figure in his own state. Back at Washington's headquarters, though, Hamilton remained bereft and downhearted. In early January 1780, he told Laurens that he had asked to be sent south, where he might take a more active role in the fighting. "In short Laurens I am disgusted with every thing in this world but yourself and very few more honest fellows and I have no other wish than as soon as possible to make a brilliant exit. 'Tis a weakness; but I feel I am not fit for this terrestreal Country." Yet rather than go south to die gloriously on the battlefield, Hamilton soon fulfilled a quite different fantasy. That winter, he met Elizabeth Schuyler.
At twenty-two years old, Elizabeth was not much younger than Hamilton himself. It was in the company of her father that the two first met. Philip Schuyler was the general who had commanded the army's northern department before the Battle of Saratoga. In April 1779, the same month Laurens had gone to South Carolina, Schuyler resigned from the army and took up a seat in the Continental Congress, representing New York, where he owned some tens of thousands of acres. His wife Catherine, Elizabeth's mother, had been a Van Rensselaer; her mother had been a Van Cortland. Through these famous families, their names hearkening back to the state's Dutch origins, Elizabeth Schuyler was related to many of the leading patriots of New York. In short, she was certainly well-bred. Moreover, she and her sisters, along with her friend Catherine Livingston, enjoyed being the center of attention among the officers when they came to visit the army's winter encampment at Morristown, New Jersey. The social life of the camp, outside the season for military maneuvers, gave Hamilton ample opportunity to court the "black eyed" young lady from Albany.
By March, when Hamilton went on a mission to negotiate with the British over military hostages, he was writing to Schuyler and addressing her as "my dearest girl." She was writing to him too, although we do not have the letter. "I cannot tell you what extacy I felt," he replied, "in casting my eye over the sweet effusions of tenderness it contains. My Betseys soul speaks in every line and bids me be the happiest of mortals. I am so and will be so." It was a transformation from the gloomy soldier who, months before, had declared himself "not fit for this terrestreal Country." In July he wrote to her again:
I love you more and more every hour. The sweet softness and delicacy of your mind and manners, the elevation of your sentiments, the real goodness of your heart, its tenderness to me, the beauties of your face and person, your unpretending good sense and that innocent simplicity and frankness which pervade your actions; all these appear to me with increasing amiableness and place you in my estimation above all the rest of your sex.
By then the couple were already engaged, and he felt entitled to give her instructions as well as compliments. She must spend more time reading and cultivating her accomplishments. Hamilton had definite ideas about the kind of lady he wanted to marry, not all of which he had expressed in his letter to Laurens.
Marrying Elizabeth Schuyler would certainly bring Hamilton into the new republican elite in a much more permanent way than his military rank. A friend in the French army, the Marquis de Fleury, wrote to congratulate him "heartyly on that conquest," which he had heard about from Schuyler's elder sister. Hamilton had two reasons to be pleased, said the Frenchman: "the first that you will get all that familly's interest, & that a man of your abilities wants a Little influence to do good to his country. The second that you will be in a very easy situation, & happin[es]s is not to be found without a Large estate." Yet in spite of what he had said to Laurens, such talk made Hamilton uncomfortable. It was all very well for a marquis to be cynical, but for Hamilton the situation was a rather delicate one. His bride would not, in fact, bring with her a large inheritance — she had an elder brother as well as an elder sister. If he had felt anxiety before about his background and status, he now felt it all the more keenly as he stood on the threshold of genteel society.
"In spite of Schuyler's black eyes," Hamilton told Laurens, "I have still a part for the public and another for you." He had not forgotten his friend, nor his responsibilities as an officer and a revolutionary. But the military and financial situation of the rebels had only worsened over the course of the year. Laurens himself was now a prisoner on parole in Philadelphia, having been captured at the fall of Charleston in May. In August, a force led by General Horatio Gates had suffered the Continental Army's worst defeat of the war at Camden, in which over a thousand of his men were killed. Severe shortages of money and supplies made it difficult for Washington to maintain morale among his men, or to respond to British victories. For Hamilton, the impending wedding made the shortfall in his pay all the more pressing. How would he support Elizabeth in the style she would expect? Letters like Fleury's offered little real encouragement. They only underlined the difficulties Hamilton still faced in fully establishing himself as a gentleman.
Four months before their wedding, Elizabeth received a long letter from her fiancé, a letter that must have told her a great deal about the paradoxical hopes and fears that crowded his mind. He began by telling her about a fellow officer who was thinking of quitting the army, and had written to his wife to ask her opinion. "You see what a fine opportunity she has to be enrolled in the catalogue of heroines," wrote Hamilton, "and I dare say she will set you an example of fortitude and patriotism. I know ... that you will not be out done in this line by any of your sex, and that if you saw me inclined to quit the service of your country, you would dissuade me from it." He expected her to act like a "Roman wife," and help him to put the duties of patriotism above his personal desires — to maintain his sacred honor even in the face of temptations. He allowed himself to hope for peace that winter; but if it came, he teased her, she would have to "submit to the mortification of enjoying more domestic happiness and less fame." What would he be, after all, without the dash and glamour of an officer's uniform?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Gentlemen Revolutionarie by Tom Cutterham. Copyright © 2017 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Inheritance 9
Chapter 2 Obedience 37
Chapter 3 Justice 66
Chapter 4 Capital 94
Chapter 5 Rebellion 123
Conclusion 152
Notes 161
Index 189
What People are Saying About This
"Cutterham has written a bracing book that demands attention. Gentlemen Revolutionaries is a beautifully written, original, and daring interpretation of the nation's most formative period."—Patrick Griffin, author of America's Revolution"Gentlemen Revolutionaries provides an engaging and enlightening study of how elite gentlemen strove and struggled to maintain the illusion of power—that is, of being able to control the social and economic transformations wrought by a revolution that they had unleashed. Cutterham advances our understanding of the reality of historical lives."—Colin Nicolson, University of Stirling