Republican Generation

Members of the civic-minded Republican Generation, which include some of our ancestors, were born between 1742 and 1766; the youngest of that generation left the world's stage about 1846.1 They were born in the wake of the The Great Awakening (1734-1743) in the American colonies, a time of great spiritual upheaval. Their parents, nurturing in a way tighter than previously, were the last-wave idealist Awakening Generation (principal perpetrators of that upheaval) or the first-wave nomadic Liberty Generation, which could not live up to the holy dictates of the upheaval and reacted to it.

The Republican Generation (of the Hero archtype in the Revolutionary Saeculum, or Cycle) grew up as the precious object of adult protection during an era of rising crime and social disorder. They came of age highly regarded for their secular optimism and spirit of cooperation. As young adults, they achieved glory as soldiers, brilliance as scientists, order as civic planners, and epic success as state crafters. Trusted by elders and aware of their own historic role, they burst into politics at a young age. They dominated the campaign to ratify the Constitution and filled all the early national cabinet posts. In midlife, they built canals and acquired territories, while their orderly Federalist and rational Republican leaders made America a "workshop of liberty." As elders, they chafed at passionate youths bent on repudiating much of what they had built.2

Most of the Republicans (all but the youngest of them) spent their childhood during the frightening years of the French and Indian War, under the protective tutelage of midlife visionary Awakeners. Protection and close supervision was the theme of nurturance. During the 1750s, colonial towns moved to protect children from the violent, even deadly Halloween mischief practiced by their next elders, the rascally Liberty Generation. Around 1745, routine brutality among and against colonial teenagers aroused little adult sympathy. By 1770, the year of the "Boston Massacre," the violent death of one child was enough to spark vehement public outrage. Over the course of just twenty-five years, American attitudes toward the young reversed direction entirely--from neglect to protection, from blame to comfort. Despairing the wayward Liberty Generation, midlife Awakeners wanted to ensure that this new crop of kids would grow up to be smart and cooperative servants to a dawning vision, a republic of virtue.3

During the war-torn 1750s, towns shielded children from the rowdiness of twentyish Liberty by tightening up on begging, gambling, and theaters. "By 1750," observes historian Jay Fliegelman, "irresponsible parents became the nation's scapegoat." The number of tutors per capita doubled as popular books reinforced the holy and protective role of the parent.4

In the 1760s, the Republican precious boys and girls were being sheltered not only from Liberty Generation "vice" but from British "corruption." Parents began avoiding the "corrupt" schools in England and sent their kids instead to Awakener-founded academies in the colonies. Here Republican teenagers could imbibe the new fever of "civic revival" and a new Scottish school of practical and optimistic curricula--now purged of such skeptics as Hume and Berkeley (who, noted Awakener Witherspoon, "take away the distinction between truth and falsehood").5

Between parents, Republican kids showed a marked preference for fathers over mothers. John Marshall later confessed that "my father was a greater man than any of his sons"; many others, such as Thomas Jefferson, cultivated a lifelong preference for male company. Historian Kenneth Lynn concludes that "certainly in no other period of our past can we find the top leaders of American society speaking as gratefully as these patriots did about the fathering they received."6

Between the babies born in 1730 and those born in 1760, better child nutrition caused the average height of adult Americans to rise by more than half an inch--the most rapid one-generation climb recorded in America until the Greatest Generation of the Twentieth Century. In 1780, the typical Republican soldier was at least two inches taller than the typical English redcoat he was fighting.7

The Republican Generation was attracted to teamwork (and not attracted to spiritual self-discovery). During the 1760s, when first-wave Republicans began graduating from college, the share of American graduates entering clerical (religious) careers fell from four-fifths to one-half. Many young men turned instead to radical Masonry, a male "brotherhood" dedicated to teamwork, good works, and secular progress. Masonic symbolism (the compass, plumbline, and carpenter's square) celebrated the builder; Masonic praise (to be "on the square") directness and utility; the Masonic icon (sunlight) the divinity of practical reason.8

The great secular crisis of the American Revolution (1773-1789), extending from the Boston Tea Party through the Declaration of Independence and ending with the ratification of the United States Constitution and the inauguration of President Washington, was the heroic coming-of-age moment for the Republican Generation, a smart and organized cadre of achievers, doing their duty. The young Republicans collectively faced the social peril, uniting to overcome the danger.9

"Columbia, Columbia, to Glory Arise!" urged Timothy Dwight to his Republican Generation peers on the eve of revolution. In 1774, the oldest (age 32) were just young enough to have no childhood memories before the new rage of parental protection and civic furor. The youngest (age 8) were just old enough to join the fight before it was over and reach full adulthood by the time of Washington's inauguration.10

Republicans were ambitious young achievers. No generation since the Glorious attained public renown so early in life: Alexander Hamilton, famous political pamphleteer at age 17; Henry Knox, commander of the Continental Army's artillery at age 25; George Rogers Clark, wilderness Napoleon at age 27; Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence at age 33. Elder Americans had never before seen such competent, cheerful, and selfless youngsters.11

In 1775, Republicans were the dutiful, order-taking young Minutemen who stood their ground at Concord bridge. In the winter of 1778, they were the cheerful soldiers who kept faith with General Washington at Valley Forge. From their war experiences, they assumed a hubris born of triumph, a belief of community over self, and a collective confidence in their own achievements that their elders and juniors could never match. Like few other generations, young Republicans expected glory. Sang New York patriot recruits in 1776:

The rising world shall sing of us a thousand years to come
And tell our children's children the wonders we have done.
From the very beginning, notes historian Charles Royster, "the revolutionary generation knew that they would stand above all their descendants."12

Intoned a popular ballad in 1779,

All gaming, tricking, swearing, lying,
Is grown quite out of fashion,
For modern youth's so self-denying,
It flies all lawless passion.
In war, young soldiers fought as a team, seldom asking why but always asking how. To elder eyes, they could do no wrong. Victimized by foul play (like the scalped Jane McCrea), they were lionized as "butchered innocents." Caught for treason (like Major John André), they attracted sympathy, even while the older Benedict Arnold was burned in effigy across the colonies.13

All human greatness shall in us be found,
For grandeur, wealth, and reason far renown'd.
announced 29-year-old David Humphreys to his peers after the American triumph at Yorktown. These young victors all knew who they were--and why they were special.14

As rising adults during decades of crisis, Republicans were aggressive institution founders. They regarded it their special mission to win independence and and then to establish political and social order. Unlike Liberty marauders and pirates, the more homogeneous Republicans--Greene, Wayne, Lee, Clark, and Jones--soon proved to be the ablest leaders of the conventional war effort. When aging Awakeners stepped down from their posts during the war, many Republicans leapfrogged their Liberty next-elders to fill the vacancies. Riding a dazzling reputation for genius and optimism, they swept into town offices and the Continental Congress, drafted state constitutions and policy treatises, and grabbed most of the new state and national offices.15

Republicans assumed political power early in life. In the 1780s, they were elected to New England town offices at a younger age than members of any generation since the Glorious. From 1774 to 1787, their delegate share of the Continental Congress soared from 7 to 75 percent. During the two Liberty Presidencies (1789-1801), Republicans claimed over three-quarters of all members of Congress, two-thirds of all Supreme Court justices, one of two Vice-Presidencies, nearly all diplomatic posts, and all fourteen cabinet appointments--from Secretary of State to Postmaster General.16

The Republican Generation's unflagging devotion to the public good remains a standard to which all later generations must compare their behavior. "We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged," said Knox in his mid-twenties. "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," declared the youthful Yale graduate Nathan Hale to his British executioners--in a voice so firm it brought tears to the eyes of the redcoats who heard it.17

The Republican Generation came of age performing deeds of collective valor that gave birth to a new nation. Worldly triumph forged them into lifelong builders and rationalists--single-minded creators of what they called "energy in government," "order and harmony" in society, "tranquillity" of mind, "usefulness and reason" in science, "abundance" in commerce. Seven years after Yorktown, in 1788, they became the rising-adult achievers--so many of them already famous--who celebrated the news of their new Constitution.18

Assuming power just when (as Rush put it) "everything is new and yielding," the Republicans' youthful confidence soon collided with the exhaustion and localism of their Liberty next-elders. Here these young heroes won their culminating victory: drafting a stronger Constitution and ratifying it over churlish Liberty opposition. The leading Federalist advocates of the Constitution were on average ten to twelve years younger than their Anti-Federalist opponents. At the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, thirtyish Republicans (Madison, Pinckney, Hamilton, Wilson, Martin, King, and Strong) were the most influential drafters and debaters. In Virginia, the ringing words of 35-year-old Edmund Randolph ("Mr. Chairman, I am a child of the Revolution . . .") overwhelmed the fiftyish Patrick Henry. In New York, the genius of The Federalist--rapidly penned by Hamilton, Jay, and Madison (average age, 36)--outclassed the fiftyish Henry Clinton.19

Republicans began leading America toward much wider sex-role distinctions. Having proved themselves "men" to their beloved fathers, rising Republicans associated "effeminacy" (and "that old hag" Britain) with corruption and disruptive passion, "manliness" with reason and disinterested virtue. Federalists taunted Jefferson for his "womanish" attachment to France, while Jefferson contemptuously called the Adams Presidency "a reign of witches" and (notes one historian) "would have totally banished women from the public sphere." Republicans widely believed that sexual and political order were directly linked. "Society is composed of individuals," Enos Hitchcock remarked. "They are parts of a whole,--and when each one moves in his own orb, and fills his own station, the system will be complete." Their men would thereafter specialize as producers and rulers, their women as moral guardians of the family.20

The children of the Republican Generation, nurtured in a relaxing way, were either the late-wave Adaptive Compromise Generation or the early-wave idealist Transcendental Generation.

Elevated by their coming-of-age triumphs, Republicans likened themselves to history's greatest empire builders, from "Caesar" (Hamilton) to "Lycurgis" (Madison). In the 1790s, young Republicans lived and breathed worldly accomplishment. Their first priority was to secure public order by eradicating Liberty atavisms. They crushed the Shaysites, Whiskey Rebels, and Ohio Indians; organized as "orderly" Federalists and "rational" Republicans; and ostracized wayward peers who refused to outgrow their coming-of-age sympathy with the French Revolution.21

Government is "instituted," observed young-adult Hamilton, "because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint." All their lives, passion was the Republicans' most hated word. The young Timothy Pickering boasted that his Federalist peers "gave the reins not to . . . passions, but to reason." The young Jefferson hoped rational Deism might soon become the national religion.22

Proud of the "mechanical courage" they had learned as soldiers, they behaved collegially and placed public interest over private gain. "Every engine should be employed to render the people of this country national," declared Noah Webster. Energetic builders, they founded "Societies for Advancement of Industry," designed a "Columbia" of colonnaded grandeur (L'Enfant), invented the cotton gin (Eli Whitney), and launched steamboats (Robert Fulton).23

During their powerful midlife (ages 44-65), Republicans were stolid institution builders and defenders. Their approach to world affairs continued to be optimistic. They all arrived together: a new century, a new capital, and a new President. Taking office in Washington, D.C., on March 4, 1801, Jefferson asked his "fellow citizens" to "unite in common efforts for the common good" and to contemplate "a rising nation . . . advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye." Confident (versed Joel Barlow) in the "fair science of celestial birth" that "leads mankind to reason and to God," midlife Republicans deemed nothing to be beyond their collective power. So it often seemed. From Jefferson's Northwest Ordinance (1787) to Monroe's acquisition of Florida (1819), the Republicans quintupled the effective size of America's domain. "The United States take their place among powers of the first rank," exulted Robert Livingston in 1803 after the 500-million-acre Louisiana Purchase. Meanwhile, Livingston's peers presided over rapid material growth, awesome by any measure--dollars of exports, miles of turnpikes and canals, bushels of cotton, and numbers of banks, post offices, ships, patents, and corporate charters.24

Rationalist Benjamin Rush was convinced that history moved in a straight line. In 1802, the Republicans' leading poet (Joel Barlow) proudly authored The Canal, subtitled "A Poem on the Application of Physical Science to Political Economy," in which he predicted "science" would "raise, improve, and harmonize mankind."25

As midlife parents and community leaders during the Jefferson Presidency, Republicans harnessed the growing nation to their enormous energy and collegial discipline. They never let their elders down. To list their leaders is to invoke a palladium of nation builders: patriotic war heroes like Nathaniel Greene, Henry Lee, Anthony Wayne, Molly Pitcher, and John Paul Jones; architects of "Columbia" like Benjamin Latrobe and Pierre Charles L'Enfant; organizers of knowledge like Benjamin Rush and Noah Webster; inventors of steamships and rational industry like Robert Fulton and Eli Whitney. Above all, the Republicans proved to be a fabled generation of statesmen: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Albert Gallatin, Robert Livingston, John Marshall, Gouveneur Morris, James Wilson, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Timothy Pickering.26

Republicans saw themselves as tireless reasoners and builders, chosen by history to wrest order from the chaos. Their most famous statesman (Jefferson) won equal fame as a scientist and architect. Their most famous legislator (Madison) was hailed as "the master-builder of the Constitution." Of their two "geniuses" of public finance, one (Gallatin) likened himself to a "laboring oar" for American prosperity, while the other (Hamilton) deemed "the habit of labor in a people" to be "conducive to the welfare of the state." Their foremost jurist (Marshall), said one admirer, argued his opinions "as certainly, as cogently, as inevitably, as any demonstration of Euclid."27

Jefferson wrote, "When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself public property." The Republicans believed that the "happiness" and "order" and "security" of society took precedence over any private desire. Republicans could not understand how other generations could view themselves in a different way.28

Projecting their personality into religion, leading Republicans worshiped a "Creator" or "Supreme Being"--a God of Reason deliberately expunged of spirituality. "Throughout Jeffersonian thought," notes historian Daniel Boorstin, "recurs this vision of God as the Supreme Maker. He was a Being of boundless energy and ingenuity who in six days had transformed the universal wilderness into an orderly, replete and self-governing cosmos. The Jeffersonian God was not the Omnipotent Sovereign of the Puritans nor the Omnipresent Essence of the Transcendentalists, but was essentially Architect and Builder."29

Not until the Greatest Generation of the Twentieth Century has any other generation of leaders been so aggressively secular in outlook. Most of the Republican candidates for President--especially Jefferson, Madison, Burr, Pinckney, and King--avoided any display of Christian piety and were widely regarded as atheists by their contemporaries. When asked by an elder clergyman why the Constitution did not mention God, the young Hamilton pertly replied: "I declare, we forgot."30

All their lives, the word republican (from Latin res publica, literally "the public thing") was central to their collective self-image and life purpose. "Republican" did not just refer to a form of government, nor to their radical agemates in France, nor even to the party label chosen by all three of their Virginia Presidents. For this generation, "republican" meant a classical paradigm of secular order--and an entire approach to social life--with which they so thoroughly reconstructed America that today we still live in their civic shadow. Without these Res Publicans, our public buildings and banks would not look like miniature Parthenons. We would not have cities named Rome, Ithaca, and Cincinnati, nor roads named Euclid Avenue and Appian Way. Our currency would not be metric, nor our money adorned with Roman images (eagles, fasces, and arrows) and lapidary inscriptions (Novus Ordo Seclorum, "the new order of the ages"). Our government would not sound as if it had been transplanted from the age of Augustus (with states, capitols, Presidents, and senators).31

Unfortunately, the very successes of the Republicans prompted growing uneasiness. As their once-compact "Republic of Virtue" expanded into a mighty "Empire of Liberty," midlife Republicans worried that something was dissolving the innocence and optimism they recalled from their youth. Perhaps it was the multiplying slave plantations, or the decimation of Indians; perhaps the vast and impersonal markets, or the westward rush of disorderly pioneers. Their frustration came to a head in the War of 1812--a conflict that disgraced six Republican major generals, nearly triggered the secession of New England, and humiliated Madison when the British effortlessly torched the White House. Their invincible self-image shattered, many Republicans thereafter retreated from public life--leaving only their Presidents in power.32

Through midlife and old age, Republicans should have delighted in the gathering political and economic might of their "Empire of Liberty." But instead--embarrassed in the War of 1812, challenged by spiritual youth, unable to control the Promethean energy they had unleashed--the aging Republican elite felt frustration and ultimately despair. The political eclipse of the Republicans coincided with their humiliation in that war. On the eve of Jefferson's embargo of 1806, Republicans still constituted 71 percent of all congressmen and governors. By the first postwar election of 1815, their share had plunged to 37 percent.33

As busy elders, preoccupied with their secular achievements of the past and overseeing the institutions they had built at least from the sidelines, the Republicans were now attacked by the younger generations involved in a new spiritual upheaval, the Transcendental Awakening (1820s and 1830s). Their voice in the community grew ever more faint. In the fall of 1823, the public watched in awe as three white-haired and magisterial Virginians (Monroe, Madison, and Jefferson--average age, 72) conferred over a declaration known as the Monroe Doctrine. With this grand twilight moment of Republican statecraft, Americans of all ages sensed that a magnificent generation was passing. As living testimonials to the great institutions they had wrought, some aging Republicans still exuded outward energy and confidence. "We must never forget that it is the Constitution we are expounding," urged Marshall proudly to younger justices. From stately Montpelier, Madison called America "the workshop of liberty to the civilized world"; from sunny Monticello, Jefferson saw "the great march of progress passing over us like a cloud of light," and his last public testament hailed "the general spread of the light of science."34

No other generation has ever matched the forty-seven-year tenure spanning the Republicans' first and last years of national leadership--from John Jay (in 1778 elected president of the Continental Congress at age 33) to James Monroe (whose second term as U.S. President expired in 1825 at his age of 67).35

In the 1820s, Congress repeatedly raised pension benefits to elderly Revolutionary War veterans; by the end of the decade, nearly half of all federal spending consisted of interest and pension payments. In 1828, 70-year-old Noah Webster introduced the word "veneration" into the American vocabulary. In the 1830s and 1840s, Americans began to "venerate" the image of "Uncle Sam" in the person of seventyish veteran Samuel Wilson, one of the last survivors of his generation.36

Republicans also believed in "equality"--as a working hypothesis about the uniformity of Nature, not as a moral imperative. While many in the Republican elite disapproved of slavery (and succeeded in ending the African slave trade), what they disliked worse was the angry debate about it. They feared any divisiveness that might imperil the great republic they had created. For this generation, some evils had to be accommodated for what they believed to be the greater good. They acted accordingly--and, late in life, often wondered why their children could not.37

As busy and outwardly "venerated" elders during President Monroe's "Era of Good Feeling," Republicans feared that their massive worldly accomplishments might not survive the restive and emotional culture of their children. Self-discipline they practiced by instinct, but self-immersion they found incomprehensible. In all the volumes Jefferson wrote about politics and science ("a more methodically industrious man never lived," observes historian Edward Morgan), he never kept a diary and hardly once mentioned his feelings. "We must go home to be happy, and our home is not of this world," Jay told a friend. "Here we have nothing to do but our duty."38

Though seemingly confident, on the inside many elderly Republicans despaired. No matter how hard they kept busy in their retirement ("It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing," wrote Jefferson to his daughter), the prospect of death came hard to a secular-minded generation dedicated more to progress than to God. Having hoped for so much, they expressed frustration over their waning influence on public life. "How feeble are the strongest hands. How weak all human efforts prove," complained the aging Philip Freneau, his upbeat poetry now unread. More often, they turned the blame around: They had not betrayed history; history had betrayed them. By history they meant their children--who were feminizing their once-manly "virtue," spurning their rational Masonic brotherhood, fragmenting into political faction, and celebrating feeling rather than teamwork. Many onlooking Republicans sensed a mocking repudiation of everything they had built. "We will leave this scene not for a tittering generation who wish to push us from it," fulminated David Humphreys. Beware "your worst passions," Gallatin presciently warned the young. After hearing the angry slavery debates of 1820, the 77-year-old Jefferson shocked two younger generations when he declared: "I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons."39

All their lives, passion was the Republicans' most hated word. Yet, late in life, passion did indeed become their nemesis. For a few Republicans (including Noah Webster, who decades earlier had proclaimed America "an empire of reason" and had tried to popularize the verb happify), born-again religion offered solace from despair in their extreme old age. For most, however, the passion of their children loomed as a threat they could neither accept nor understand.40

Ironically, this generation of "Founding Fathers" had far closer, more affectionate relationships as children with their own fathers than they ever had later on as their own children. In the 1760s, Republicans were handed a worldly mission by unworldly elders and as young adults achieved immortal greatness fulfilling it. A half century later, they tried to make their own young into replicas of themselves--to make them (as Rush described the purpose of education) into "Republican machines" able "to perform their parts properly in the great machine of government of state." It seemed a simple enough task for such powerful and heroic builders--the only "generation" of Americans praised throughout their lives (and ever afterward) for unequaled glory. But it was the single task at which they failed utterly.41

Birthyears for the Republican Generation
(Linked names are ancestors of ours;
linked "G-" numbers refer to the family generations of those ancestors.)

 


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Notes:

1. The information on this page has been adapted with permission from William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991). [Back to your place on this page.]

2. William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy (New York: Broadway Books [Bantam-Doubleday-Dell], 1997), p. 131. [Back to your place on this page.]

3. Strauss and Howe (1991), pp. 99, 172, 177. [Back to your place on this page.]

4. Ibid, p. 177, citing Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800 (1982), p. 22; Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783 (1970), p. 539. [Back to your place on this page.]

5. Ibid, pp. 172, 177, citing Beverly McAnear, "College Founding in the American Colonies, 1745-1775," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 42 (1955); Daniel Blake Smith, Inside the Great House: Planter Life in Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake Society (1980); Cremin (1970), p. 300. [Back to your place on this page.]

6. Ibid, p. 177, citing Charles Scribner's Sons, Dictionary of American Biography (1930); Clifford Dowdey, The Virginia Dynasties: The Emergence of "King" Carter and the Golden Age (1970), pp. 197, 241-42; Kenneth S. Lynn, A Divided People (1977), p. 68. [Back to your place on this page.]

7. Ibid, pp. 175-176, citing Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, and James Trussel, "Exploring the Uses and Data on Height," and Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Georgia C. Villaflor, "The Early Achievement of Modern Stature in America," Social Science History (Fall 1982); S. F. McMahon, "Provisons Laid Up for the Family: Toward a History of Diet in New England, 1650-1850," Historical Methods (Winter 1981). [Back to your place on this page.]

8. Ibid, p. 176, citing John F. Roche, The Colonial Colleges in the War for American Independence (1986), p. 9; Catherine Albanese, Sons of the Fathers: The Civil Religion of the American Revolution (1976), ch. 4; Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (1941), pp. 100-01. [Back to your place on this page.]

9. Ibid, p. 88. [Back to your place on this page.]

10. Ibid, p. 177, citing Dwight, Columbia (final version appeared in 1783). [Back to your place on this page.]

11. Ibid, pp. 173, 177. [Back to your place on this page.]

12. Ibid, pp. 90, 172, citing a song of New York recruits, in Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War (1979), p. 8; ibid., p. 8. [Back to your place on this page.]

13. Ibid, pp. 177-78, citing the ballad in 1779, itself cited in Albanese (1976), p. 56. [Back to your place on this page.]

14. Ibid, p. 172, citing Humphreys, The Glory of America (1783). [Back to your place on this page.]

15. Ibid, pp. 172, 178. [Back to your place on this page.]

16. Ibid, p. 176, citing Edward M. Cook, Jr., The Fathers of the Towns: Leadership and Community Structure in Eighteenth-Century New England (1976), pp. 105-07, 191. [Back to your place on this page.]

17. Ibid, p. 175, citing Knox, in Dictionary of American Biography (1930); Hale, in ibid. [Back to your place on this page.]

18. Ibid, p. 172. [Back to your place on this page.]

19. Ibid, pp. 176, 178, citing Rush to William Peterkin (1784), in Melvin Yazawa, "Creating a Republican Citizenry," in Jack P. Greene (ed.), The American Revolution (1987); Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, "The Founding Fathers: Young Men of the Revolution, Political Science Quarterly (June 1961); Randolph, in Pauline Maier, The Old Revolutionaries (1980), p. 289; The Federalist (March-May 1788): 77 essays, of which Hamilton wrote 51, Madison 29, and Jay 5. [Back to your place on this page.]

20. Ibid, pp. 178-79, citing Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (1977), part 5; Fliegelman (1982), p. 234; Merrill D. Peterson, Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (1976), p. 82; historian Crane (1987) on Jefferson; Hitchcock, An Oration: Delivered July 4, 1788 (cited in Albanese [1976], p. 209). [Back to your place on this page.]

21. Ibid, p. 178. "Caesar," "Lycurgus," and "Publius" were popular pamphlet pseudonyms. [Back to your place on this page.]

22. Ibid, p. 180, citing Hamilton, in The Federalist (1788), no. 15; Pickering, in Peter Charles Hoffer, Revolution and Regeneration: Life Cycle and the Historical Vision of the Generation of 1776 (1983), p. 87. [Back to your place on this page.]

23. Ibid, p. 178, citing "mechanical courage," in Royster (1979), p. 227; Webster, in Norman Risjord, Forging the American Republic, 1760-1815 (1973), p. 245. [Back to your place on this page.]

24. Ibid, pp. 39, 179, citing Jefferson, first inaugural address (March 4, 1801); Joel Barlow, The Columbiad (1807); Livingston, in Dictionary of American Biography (1930). [Back to your place on this page.]

25. Ibid, pp. 9, 173, citing Barlow, The Canal: A Poem on the Application of Physical Science to Political Economy (1802). [Back to your place on this page.]

26. Ibid, pp. 172-73. [Back to your place on this page.]

27. Ibid, p. 173, citing Madison and Gallatin, in Dictionary of American Biography (1930); Hamilton, in Vernon L. Parrington, The Colonial Mind (1927; 1954), vol. 1, pp. 309-10; William Wirt on Marshall, in Dictionary of American Biography. [Back to your place on this page.]

28. Ibid, pp. 9, 175, citing Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt (1804), in George Seldes (ed.), The Great Thoughts (1985), p. 209. [Back to your place on this page.]

29. Ibid, p. 173, citing Boorstin, The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1960), p. 29. [Back to your place on this page.]

30. Ibid, p. 176, citing Hamilton, in Albanese (1976), p. 203. [Back to your place on this page.]

31. Ibid, pp. 173-75, citing "Roman Virtue," in Howard Mumford Jones, O Strange New World (1952). [Back to your place on this page.]

32. Ibid, p. 179. [Back to your place on this page.]

33. Ibid, pp. 173, 176, citing Julian P. Boyd, "Thomas Jefferson's "Empire of Liberty," Virginia Quarterly Review, (Autumn 1948). [Back to your place on this page.]

34. Ibid, pp. 12, 74, 179, citing Marshall, in Dictionary of American Biography; Madison, in Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic, 1801-1850 (1968), p. 187; Jefferson, in Russel Blaine Nye, The Cultural Life of the New Nation, 1776-1830 (1960), p. 31, and in Peterson (1976), p. 128. [Back to your place on this page.]

35. Ibid, p. 176. [Back to your place on this page.]

36. Ibid, pp. 176-77, citing Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828); Dictionary of American Biography (1930). [Back to your place on this page.]

37. Ibid, p. 175, citing John P. Diggins, "Slavery, Race, and Equality: Jefferson and the Pathos of the Enlightenment," American Quarterly (Summer 1976). [Back to your place on this page.]

38. Ibid, p. 173, citing Edward Morgan, "The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly (1967); Jay to John Lowell (1796), in David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (1965), p. 9. [Back to your place on this page.]

39. Ibid, pp. 179-80, citing Jefferson to Martha Jefferson (1787), in Morgan (1967); Freneau, in Hoffer (1983), p. 129; Humphreys, in ibid., p. 121; Gallatin (at age 88), in Page Smith, The Nation Comes of Age (1981), p. 227; Jefferson, in Hoffer (1983), p. 123. [Back to your place on this page.]

40. Ibid, p. 180, citing happify in Webster, The American Spelling Book (1798), cited in Fliegelman (1982), p. 161; Webster's "empire of reason" (1789), in Hoffer (1983), p. 58. [Back to your place on this page.]

41. Ibid, citing Rush, in Jacqueline S. Reiner, "Rearing the Republican Child: Attitudes and Practices in Post-Revolutionary Philadelphia," William and Mary Quarterly (January 1982). [Back to your place on this page.]

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