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The Agrarian Democracy of Thomas Jefferson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

A. Whitney Griswold
A. Whitney Griswold
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

If the past determines or in any way influences the present, the present invariably reverses the process. One of the more striking instances of this rule has been the recent apotheosis of Thomas Jefferson as a national hero equal in stature to Washington and Lincoln. In an atmosphere of industrialism, urban living, and strong, impersonal national government that tradition might lead us to suppose would kill it, the Jefferson legend has blossomed and put forth new shoots. As Mr. Douglass Adair has pointed out, the pioneer democrat and agrarian liberal “discovered” by Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard and celebrated by Parrington, Nock, and Bowers, has lately found more complicated, more interesting, and incidentally more timely, portrayal at the hands of Carl Becker, Gilbert Chinard, and Adrienne Koch. These writers, whose company is now joined by Mr. Joseph Dorfman, have been at pains to show the range and diversity of Jefferson's thought, and above all how he moved with his times to espouse the cause of commerce, industry, and national power. Mr. Dorfman crowds all these qualities together under the label, “Thomas Jefferson: Commercial Agrarian Democrat” which, if the trend continues, may have to be stretched to “Commercial Industrial Agrarian Democratic Federalist.”

Does the label fit? The legendary Jefferson was an agrarian; and even as modern scholars were finding in his writings political precepts for an industrial age, the farmers of the United States were recognizing him as the founder of American agriculture and adopting him as their patron saint.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , August 1946 , pp. 657 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1946

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References

1 “The New Thomas Jefferson,” William and Mary Quarterly, Jan., 1946, pp. 123–133.

2 The Economic Mind in American Civilization, I, 433–447.

3 Senate Joint Resolution 47, House Joint Resolution 114. For text of this resolution and activities of the Bicentenary Committee, etc., see Agricultural History, Vol. 19, pp. 167–185.

4 Washington to Young, Aug. 6, 1786. Knight, P. (ed.), Letters on Agriculture from His Excellency George Washington, President of the United States, to Arthur Young, Esq., F.R.S., and Sir John Sinclair, Bart, M. P., p. 16.Google Scholar

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8 Cf. Craven, A. O., “John Taylor and Southern Agriculture,” Journal of Southern History, Vol. 4 (1938), pp. 137–147CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Drell, Bernard, “John Taylor of Caroline and the Preservation of an Old Social Order,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 46 (1938), pp. 285–298Google Scholar; Mudge, E. T., The Social Philosophy of John Taylor of Caroline (1939), esp. pp. 5–6Google Scholar; Dauer, M. J. and Hammond, H., “John Taylor: Democrat or Aristocrat?,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 6 (1944), pp. 381–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The findings of these authorities substantially qualify Taylor's theory of democracy, as, indeed, does a reading of Arator and the Inquiry, in which that belief is most fully expounded. From these documents it seems clear that Taylor's main interest was vested in the planter society to which he belonged, and the decline of whose economic fortunes he was trying to reverse (a) by an intelligent and far-sighted program of soil conservation as set forth in Arator and (b) by political actions and doctrines designed to check the advance of nationalism, commerce, and industry, and adding up to a dialectic of states' rights. Although Jefferson expressly acknowledged his indebtedness to Taylor, with whom he said he “rarely, if ever, differed in any political principle of importance” (Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie, Dec. 25, 1820, and same to Samuel Smith, Apr. 12, 1821, Writings, XII, pp. 176, 203), to read them both, side by side, is to sense the fundamental difference between them. Notwithstanding the fact that Jefferson's writings on democracy and agrarianism were brief and fragmentary while Taylor's were voluminous and systematic, Taylor's localism, both in time and place, and his intense partisanship make it impossible to accept him unreservedly as the philosopher of Jeffersonian democracy. An ardent agrarian he certainly was, going Jefferson one better in every claim of economic supremacy and moral perfection for agriculture. Likewise, as H. H. Simms (Life of John Taylor), Dauer and Hammond (op. cit.), and Arthur Schlesinger (The Age of Jackson) have depicted him, he was a last-ditch opponent of Federalism, more uncompromising than Jefferson himself. Yet he worked and thought primarily for a particular class at a particular time in a particular context of party politics; and these facts, together with his incredibly diffuse style, have limited his fame; while Jefferson's, resting on national achievement and universal principles, lives on. For all of these reasons, Jefferson seems a more authentic philosopher of Jeffersonian democracy than does Taylor.

9 Writings, II, p. 179. All references to Federal Edition (P. L. Ford, ed.), New York, 1904, unless otherwise indicated.

10 Ibid., pp. 268–271; I, pp. 58–59, 68–69, 77.

11 Jefferson to Rev. James Madison (cousin of President Madison), Oct. 28, 1785. Writings, VIII, p. 196.

12 Claude R. Wickard, “Thomas Jefferson—Founder of Modern American Agriculture,” address delivered at Monticello, April 13, 1944, the 201st anniversary of Jefferson's birth. Agricultural History, Vol. 19, p. 179.

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18 Based on financial assets in 1944. Figures in millions of dollars from Moody's Manual of Investments, Industrial Securities, 1945, showing the eight largest as follows:

19 Jefferson to Milligan, Oct. 25, 1818, in De Tracy, A Treatise on Political Economy, foreword.

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27 Writings, IV, pp. 85–86.

28 To John Jay, Aug. 23, 1785. Writings, IV, pp. 449–450.

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41 Writings, II, p. 113.

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43 Cf. above, p. 660.

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47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., par. 30.

49 Ibid., par. 31.

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57 Ibid., pp. 77–78.

58 Cf. above, p. 660.

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