This posting makes
certain assumptions. Most important, it
assumes that the reader has reviewed the timeline this blog offers in a series
of postings preceding this one. It
describes the major events associated with the Whig Party in the years roughly
from 1830 to 1860. As the last posting
indicates, this blog will proceed to evaluate the federalist nature of that
party indicating whether what happened or what the party promoted operationalized
or counteracted federalist values.
Initially, this effort will rely heavily on the work of Daniel
Walker Howe,[1]
both directly and with the help of a review by Allen C. Guelzo.[2] To begin, one has to contextualize Howe’s
work as a somewhat reaction to a line of thought that attempted to associate the
main nemesis of the Whigs, that being Andrew Jackson, to a more popular image. Previous to Howe’s book, there was an effort
to bind the legacy of Jackson to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
In simple terms, the
picture promoted by such books as Arthur Schlesinger’s, The Age of Jackson,[3] casts Jackson as a champion of the lower classes while the
Whigs represented the emerging business upper class. Howe’s work takes a different slant to describe
the Whigs.
Instead of championing the Eastern elites, bent on obstructing class-leveling
plan by Jackson (in the fashion later taken up by Roosevelt’s New Deal), the
Whigs are portrayed by Howe as promoting the interests of small businesses and those
who advanced them in the role of commercial producers.
By doing so, Whigs can be seen as transformers, optimistic enablers
who seriously went about adopting the messages from religious moralists and
thinkers of the dominant (mostly pro Protestant based) denominations. Of particular preferences were those ideals
that bolstered personal transformation and ambitious outlooks of
self-advancement (Horatio Alger comes to mind).
According to Guelzo, Howe began his effort to tell the Whig
story not from the perspective of a burgeoning economic class seeking political
favor, but found their mental landscape – their assumptions, values, and
beliefs – a more fertile subject. And
there he found the story of a group seeking to escape what was for them a
dreary life that one found on the farm and instead sought one of commerce on a
global stage with the promise of it being more alluring, more dynamic, and more
diverse.
And with that, the Whigs introduced a more cosmopolitan perspective
of the American discourse. In that
description, Howe expounds on several elements.
The first is “improvement” as portrayed in the Whigs’ admonishment, at
an individual level, to transform oneself and, in turn, with the aim of transforming
the national ambition.
That was an ambition resting on a national perspective (as
opposed to local, limited views), on a sense of morality replete with duties
(as opposed to equality and rights), and on a commitment to the unity of the
nation (as opposed to localism or sectionalism). In hindsight, with the sectional conflict on
the rise – especially over slavery and other issues – one can see a limited
lifespan for this party.
One should remember, Jacksonian politics, even if the President
riled against South Carolina’s nullification claims, favored states maintaining
their prerogatives. Instead, the Whigs
argued for an expanded role for the federal government. Guelzo writes,
[I]t was the Whigs
who advocated an expansive federal government – but it was a government that
would seek to promote a general liberal, middle-class national welfare,
promoting norms of Protestant morality and underwriting the expansion of
industrial capitalism by means of government-funded transportation projects (to
connect people and markets), high protective tariffs for American manufacturing,
and a national banking system to regulate and standardize the American economy. Howe’s Whigs were the embodiment … of [the] upward
striving, of the triumph of reason over passion, [and] of the positive liberal
state … [4]
In short, they opposed Jacksonianism’s exaltation of
agriculture, equating of land as the measure of wealth, and the parochial
interests and perspectives of subsistence farming.
The opposing, landed people were for the most part unaffected by
a fluctuating economy as experienced with the Panic of 1837, especially compared
to those who were more dependent on monetized assets. The landed contingency cared little for notions
of economic transformation, had little use for moral transformation, and saw
the purveyors of such morals as questionable characters. Overall, such messaging and promotion were
seen as encroaching on these farmers’ independence and the independence of
their localities.
In terms of national politics, such localism supported the
Democratic Party with its support of states’ rights. That party also found its messaging
ironically appealing to immigrants, since the party was cast as the anti-middle-class
lifestyle party. So, what developed was a
good body of opposing views between Whigs and Democrats as to whose interests
should be protected and advanced.
Howe encapsulates these diverging interests:
To put things very
broadly, the Whigs proposed a society that would be economically diverse but
culturally uniform; the Democrats preferred the economic uniformity of a
society of small farmers and artisans but were more tolerant of cultural and
moral diversity.[5]
Howe’s work affords the
Whig legacy a bit of rehabilitation after Schlesinger’s book on Jackson did it
so much harm. While one does not need to
be a neo-Whig, one can ascribe to them a more positive role in the development of
American thought.
And how
does Howe’s depiction of the Whigs, to extent it is accurate, allows one to consider the
degree to which the party represented federalist values?[6] The overall thrust of those
values promotes social capital and civic humanism. That is,
·
Social capital means a societal quality characterized by
having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations,
and a social environment of trust and cooperation.[7]
·
Civic humanism is defined as a communal
bias which holds that citizens are, through the polity, in a partnership. As such, the individual is disposed to
sacrifice personal interest for the common good or, if not, at least arrange
for personal interests not to be antagonistic to the common good.[8]
So, to evaluate the Whigs based on the
information offered in this posting, one can attribute to them a strong
federalist bias, especially as it is expressed with a national perspective. Given how the US originated, of bringing
together ever-growing polities – more local arrangements coming together to
first form regional entities, then state entities, and finally a national entity
– one can readily understand how at each stage certain challenges were faced as
common folks were asked to broaden their social views. The Whigs took on the more inclusive disposition.
This expansion had various elements, including from how it
was holistically experienced to how such individual policies – the establishment
of a national bank or the imposition of tariffs – to how it affected people’s
daily lives. This blog will review these
more individual elements in the next posting.
[1] Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the
American Whigs (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1979).
[2]
Allen C. Guelzo, “The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian
Politics and the Onset of the Civil War by Michael Holt,” Journal of the
Abraham Lincoln Association, 22, 2 (2001), accessed August 19, 2021, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0022.206/--rise-and-fall-of-the-american-whig-party-jacksonian-politics?rgn=main;view=fulltext .
[3] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The Age of Jackson (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, Bay Back Books,
1988).
[4]
Guelzo, “The Rise
and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the
Civil War by Michael Holt,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.
[5]
Howe, The Political Culture of the American
Whigs, 20.
[6]
This blogger, in his published book, Toward a
Federated Nation, proposes a hierarchy federalist values. It takes the following form: Trump Value: societal welfare (through societal survival
and societal health); Key Instrumental Values: constitutional integrity (as federal
liberty), equality (as regulated equality), communal democracy, democratic
pluralism and diversity, compact-al arrangements, earned trust, loyalty,
patriotism, justice; Operational Values (partial listing): political engagement, due process, legitimate
authority, critical and transparent deliberation (or collaboration), inclusive
problem-solving, countervailing powers, privacy, universality of human rights,
tolerance, non-violence, responsible ambition, teamwork, consideration of
others, economic sufficiency, security, localism, expertise.
[7]
Robert D.
Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
[8] See Isaac Kramnick, “John Locke and Liberal Constitutionalism,”
in Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Volume I: The Colonial Era Through Reconstruction,
edited by Kermit L. Hall (Lexington, MA:
D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 97-114.
[9]
Guelzo, “The Rise
and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the
Civil War by Michael Holt,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.
No comments:
Post a Comment