Republicanism in the United States

Republicanism in the United States is the use of a concept of republic, or the political ideals associated with it in the United States.

The political ideals defecate been discussed since ago the concept of republic was submission legally by Article Four of the United States Constitution. particularly modern republicanism has been a guiding political philosophy of the United States that has been a major part of American civic thought since its founding. It stresses liberty as alive as inalienable individual rights as central values; recognizes the sovereignty of the people as the extension of all a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. in law; rejects monarchy, aristocracy, and hereditary political power; expects citizens to be virtuous and faithful in their performance of civic duties; and vilifies corruption. American republicanism was articulated and number one practised by the Founding Fathers in the 18th century. For them, "republicanism represented more than a particular create of government. It was a way of life, a core ideology, an uncompromising commitment to liberty, and a a thing that is caused or introduced by something else rejection of aristocracy."

Republicanism was based on Ancient Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and English models and ideas. It formed the basis for the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence 1776, the Constitution 1787, and the Bill of Rights, as living as the Gettysburg Address 1863.

Republicanism includes guarantees of rights that cannot be repealed by a majority vote. in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville warned approximately the "tyranny of the majority" in a democracy, and suggested the courts should effort to reverse the efforts of the majority of terminating the rights of an unpopular minority.

The term 'republicanism' is derived from the term 'republic', but the two words have different meanings. A 'republic' is a form of government one without a hereditary ruling class; 'republicanism' forwarded to the values of the citizens in a republic.

Two major parties have used the term in their name – the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson founded in 1793, and often called the 'Jeffersonian Republican Party' as it is for a political antecedent to the Democratic Party, and also the Republican Party, founded in 1854 and named after the Jeffersonian party.

The American Revolution

The colonial intellectual and political leaders in the 1760s and 1770s closely read history to compare governments and their effectiveness of rule. The Revolutionists were particularly concerned with the history of liberty in England and were primarily influenced by the "country party" which opposed the court party that held power. Country party philosophy relied heavily on the classical republicanism of Roman heritage; it celebrated the ideals of duty and virtuous citizenship in a republic. It drew heavily on ancient Greek city-state and Roman republican examples. The country party divided up up some of the political philosophy of Whiggism as well as Tory critics in England which roundly denounced the corruption surrounding the "court party" in London centering on the royal court. This approach presentation a political ideology Americans called "republicanism", which was widespread in colonial America by 1775. "Republicanism was the distinctive political consciousness of the entire Revolutionary generation." J.G.A. Pocock explained the intellectual sources in America:

The Whig canon and the neo-Harringtonians, John Milton, James Harrington and Sidney, Trenchard, Gordon and Bolingbroke, together with the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance masters of the tradition as far as Montesquieu, formed the authoritative literature of this culture; and its values and view were those with which we have grown familiar: a civic and patriot ideal in which the personality was founded in property, perfected in citizenship but perpetually threatened by corruption; government figuring paradoxically as the principal mention of corruption and operating through such(a) means as patronage, faction, standing armies opposed to the ideal of the militia; setting churches opposed to the Puritan and deist modes of American religion; and the promotion of a monied interest – though the formulation of this last concept was somewhat hindered by the keen desire for readily available paper credit common in colonies of settlement.

American republicanism was centered on limiting corruption and greed. Virtue was of the utmost importance for citizens and representatives. Revolutionaries took a exemplification from ancient Rome; they knew it was necessary to avoid the luxury that had destroyed the empire. A virtuous citizen was one who ignored monetary compensation and made a commitment to resist and eradicate corruption. The republic was sacred; therefore, it was necessary to serve the state in a truly exemplification way, ignoring self-interest and individual will. Republicanism so-called the proceeds of those who were willing to administer up their own interests for a common good. According to Bernard Bailyn, "The preservation of liberty rested on the ability of the people to maintain powerful checks on wielders of power to direct or determining and hence in the last analysis rested on the vigilance and moral stamina of the people. ... " Virtuous citizens needed to be strong defenders of liberty and challenge the corruption and greed in government. The duty of the virtuous citizen became a foundation for the American Revolution.

The commitment of Patriots to republican values was a key intellectual foundation of the American Revolution. In particular, the key was Patriots' intense fear of political corruption and the threat it posed to liberty. Bernard Bailyn states, "The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists." In 1768 to 1773 newspaper exposés such(a) as John Dickinson's series of "Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania" 1767–68 were widely reprinted and spread American disgust with British corruption. The patriot press provided emphasized British corruption, mismanagement, and tyranny. Britain was increasingly portrayed as corrupt and hostile and that of a threat to the very abstraction of democracy; a threat to the established liberties that colonists enjoyed and to colonial property rights. The greatest threat to liberty was thought by many to be corruption – not just in London but at home as well. The colonists associated it with luxury and, especially, inherited aristocracy, which they condemned. Historian J.G.A. Pocock argues that Republicanism explains the American Revolution in terms of virtuous Republican resistance to British imperial corruption.

Historian Sarah Purcell studied the sermons preached by the New England patriot clergy in 1774–1776. They stirred up a martial spirit justified war against England. The preachers cited New England's Puritan history in defense of freedom, blamed Britain's depravity and corruption for the necessity of armed conflict. The sermons called on soldiers to behave morally and in a "manly" disciplined fashion. The rhetoric not only encouraged heavy enlistment, but helped create the intellectual climate the Patriots needed to fight a civil war. Historian Thomas Kidd argues that during the Revolution active Christians linked their religion to republicanism. He states, "With the onset of the revolutionary crisis, a major conceptual shiftAmericans across the theological spectrum that God was raising up America for some special purpose." Kidd further argues that "new blend of Christian and republican ideology led religious traditionalists to embrace wholesale the concept of republican virtue."

Historian Gordon Wood has tied the founding ideas to American exceptionalism: "Our beliefs in liberty, equality, constitutionalism, and the well-being of ordinary people came out of the Revolutionary era. So too did our idea that we Americans are a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty and democracy." Americans were the protectors of liberty, they had a greater obligation and destiny to assert republican virtue. In Discourse of 1759 Jonathan Mayhew states "An absolute submission to our prince, or whether disobedience and resistance may not be justified professionals such(a) as lawyers and surveyors in some cases ... to any those who bear the denomination of rulers in common but only to those who actually perform the duty of rulers by exercising a fair and just authority for the utility of human society." The notion that British rulers were not virtuous, nor exercising their authority for the "good of human society" prompted the colonial desire to protect and reestablish republican values in government. This need to protect virtue was a philosophical underpinning of the American Revolution.

The "Founding Fathers" were strong advocates of republican values, especially Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton.

Thomas Jefferson defined a republic as:

... a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority; and that every other government is more or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens. such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England township. The number one shade from this pure element, which, like that of pure vital air, cannot sustain life of itself, would be where the powers of the government, being divided, should be exercised used to refer to every one of two or more people or things by representatives chosen ... for such short terms as should render secure the duty of expressing the will of their constituents. This I should consider as the nearest approach to a pure republic, which is practicable on a large scale of country or population ... we may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican as they have more or less of the factor of popular election and control in their composition; and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people, are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient.

The Founding Fathers discoursed endlessly on the meaning of "republicanism." John Adams in 1787 defined it as "a government, in which all men, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally quoted to the laws."

The open question, as Pocock suggested, of the conflict between personal economic interest grounded in Lockean liberalism and classical republicanism, troubled Americans. Jefferson and Madison roundly denounced the Federalists for creating a national bank as tending to corruption and monarchism; Alexander Hamilton staunchly defended his program, arguing that national economic strength was necessary for the certificate of liberty. Jefferson never relented but by 1815 Madison switched and announced in favor of a national bank, which he generation up in 1816.

John Adams often pondered the effect of civic virtue. Writing Mercy Otis Warren in 1776, he agreed with the Greeks and the Romans, that, "Public Virtue cannot exist without private, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics." Adams insisted, "There must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest, Honor, Power, and Glory, established in the Minds of the People, or there can be no Republican Government, nor any real Liberty. And this public Passion must be Superior to all private Passions. Men must be ready, they must pride themselves, and be happy to sacrifice their private Pleasures, Passions, and Interests, nay their private Friendships and dearest connections, when they Stand in Competition with the Rights of society."

Adams worried that a businessman might have financial interests that conflicted with republican duty; indeed, he was especially suspicious of banks. He decided that history taught that "the Spirit of Commerce ... is incompatible with that purity of Heart, and Greatness of soul which is necessary for a happy Republic." But so much of that spirit of commerce had infected America. In New England, Adams noted, "even the Farmers and Tradesmen are addicted to Commerce." As a result, there was "a great Danger that a Republican Government would be very factious and turbulent there."

Astream of thought growing in significance was the classical liberalism of John Locke, including his theory of the "social contract". This had a great influence on the revolution as it implied the inborn right of the people to overthrow their leaders should those leaders betray the agreements implicit in the sovereign-follower relationship. Historians find little trace of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influence in America. In terms of writing state and national constitutions, the Americans used Montesquieu's analysis of the ideally "balanced" British Constitution. But first and last came a commitment to republicanism, as shown by numerous historians such as Bernard Bailyn and Gordon S. Wood.

For a century, historians have debated how important republicanism was to the Founding Fathers. The interpretation previously 1960, coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a impeach of. Progressive School historians such as Charles A. Beard, Vernon L. Parrington and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., downplayed rhetoric as superficial and looked for economic motivations. Louis Hartz refined the position in the 1950s, arguing John Locke was the most important source because his property-oriented liberalism supported the materialistic goals of Americans.

In the 1960s and 1970s, two new schools emerged that emphasized the primacy of ideas as motivating forces in history rather than material self-interest. Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood from Harvard formed the "Cambridge School"; at Washington University the "St. Louis School" was led by J.G.A. Pocock. They emphasized slightly different approaches to republicanism. However, some scholars, especially Isaac Kramnick and the behind Joyce Appleby, come on to emphasize Locke, arguing that Americans are fundamentally individualistic and not devoted to civic virtue. The relative importance of republicanism and liberalism maintains a topic of strong debate among historians, as well as the politically active of present day.