The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760-1800

This book is an attempt to provide an interpretive framework for much of the history that has been written about Early American History in the three decades prior to its publication (1990). I have read many of the historical works that Shalhope is attempting to synthesize. I wish I had known of this book when I first started to read seriously in American history. Simply stated this is a great place to start in the study of the 1770-1800 period. It is a little outdated but it is dealing with a lot of historical work that remains essential. The following is a partial list of the authors whose work Shalhope has tried to contextualize within his interpretive framework: Joyce Appleby, Bernard Bailyn, Joseph Ellis, David Fischer, Jack P. Greene, Nathan O. Hatch, Rhys Isaac, Isaac Kramnick, Kenneth Lockridge, Drew McCoy, Jackson Turner Main, Gary Nash, Caroline Robbins and Gordon Wood. In six very well written and compressed chapters ( the whole book is less than 170 pages!), Shalhope outlines the main ideological framework of the "old order", the emergence of "revolutionary republicanism" as effected not just by political thought but by current religious movements, developments in the arts and changes in the economic realm and finally the transition to the liberal democratic thought that Shalhope feels was characteristic of the early nineteenth century. Shalhope makes several points that are worth discussing. For someone like myself (an agnostic who leans toward atheism in my dogmatic moments) one of the more challenging aspects of American history is how often the impetus toward reform and/or revolt was deeply religious. The rise of Baptism in the 1760s and 1770s would prove to be profoundly democratic. "Baptists sought an orderly, moral community, a more secure center of social control centered in the people themselves rather than in a gentry-controlled social hierarchy." (p.36) The locus of authority shifted from the gentry to the saved individual within their fraternal community. This is one of the many ways in which the "old order" broke down and which would have implications for post-Revolutionary politics. Shalhope also writes very well about the shifting meanings of virtue during this period. This period saw Locke's thought shifted from natural equality to a "natural right to equal opportunity" by reformers like Richard Price (p.48). Virtue began to shift in meaning from an emphasis on civic virtues like the selfless love of country (exemplified by Washington) to economic virtues like frugality and personal economic autonomy. Shalhope explores these shifting meanings in his last chapter which focuses on the conflict in the 1790's between the Federalists and the Republicans. I would love to have a chance to actually converse with the author on several points. I have notice in many writings on this period a determination not to see the schisms of the time in anything approaching a class framework. The emphasis is always on political thought or