The federalist trope: Power and passion in abolitionist rhetoric

Journal of American History

Volumn 88, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 75-98

  Arkin, Marc M ^a  

^a FORDHAM UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 34748816271     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2674919     Document Type: Article

References (182)

1. John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison, a Biography (Boston, 1963), 127;
2. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison: 1805-1878, The Story of His Life Told By His Children (4 vols., New York, 1885), I, 219-20;
3. "To the Public," Liberator, Jan. 1, 1831.
4. Ronald G. Walters, "The Boundaries of Abolitionism," in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, ed. Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (Baton Rouge, 1979), 1-23;
5. Paul Goodman, Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality (Berkeley, 1998);
6. Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York, 1994), 129-62;
7. Ronald G. Walters, The Antislavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830 (Baltimore, 1976).
8. Alice D. Adams, The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America, 1808-1831 (1908; Gloucester, Mass., 1964), 95;
9. William Lee Miller, Arguing about Slavery: The Great Battle in the United States Congress (New York, 1996), 67;
10. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling, 129-30.
11. For the view that later accounts greatly overstated Garrison's role, see Gilbert H. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse: 1830-1844 (1933; New York, 1964), 174-75.
12. Elizabeth B. Clark, "'The Sacred Rights of the Weak': Pain, Sympathy, and the Culture of Individual Rights in Antebellum America," Journal of American History, 82 (Sept. 1995), 463-65;
13. Ronald G. Walters, "The Erotic South: Civilization and Sexuality in American Abolitionism," American Quarterly, 25 (May 1973), 177-78.
14. Goodman, Of One Blood;
15. Clark, "'Sacred Rights of the Weak,'" 463-65, 475-78;
16. Kristin Hoganson, "Garrisonian Abolitionists and the Rhetoric of Gender, 1850-1860," American Quarterly, 45 (Dec. 1993), 559-61;
17. Karen Sanchez-Eppler, Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body (Berkeley, 1993);
18. Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), 41;
19. Philip Fisher, Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American Novel (New York, 1985), 87-127;
20. Walters, Antislavery Appeal, 52-69, 72-78;
21. Walters, "Erotic South," 177-89.
22. See Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998), 16-70;
23. Thomas, Liberator, 32-53;
24. and Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, I, 36-58.
25. For a rare exception, which nonetheless places greater emphasis on Garrison's evangelical background than on Federalism, see Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling, 137.
26. Linda K. Kerber, Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America (Ithaca, 1980), esp. xi;
27. David H. Fischer, "The Myth of the Essex Junto," William and Mary Quarterly, 21 (April 1964), 191, 199. Both authors are more sympathetic to the Federalists than is indicated by the text's description of the prevailing understanding.
28. James M. Banner Jr., To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789-1815 (New York, 1970);
29. David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of Jeffersonian Democracy (New York, 1965).
30. See James M. Banner, "The Federalists - Still in Need of Reconsideration," in Federalists Reconsidered, ed. Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg (Charlottesville, 1998), 246-53.
31. "Warren," Columbian Centinel, Feb. 2, 1814,
32. quoted in Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 85;
33. Stephen Higginson to Timothy Pickering, Nov. 22, 1803, To the Hartford Convention, ibid., 100;
34. Manasseh Cutler to Ephraim Cutler, March 14, 1802, To the Hartford Convention, ibid., 88;
35. Fisher Ames, "The Dangers of American Liberty," 1805, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. William B. Allen (2 vols., Indianapolis, 1983), I, 133.
36. Fischer, "Myth of the Essex Junto," 191-95;
37. Columbian Centinel, July 23, 1814,
38. quoted in Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 6.
39. This account of Ames's life is drawn from Winfred E. A. Bernhard, Fisher Ames: Federalist and Statesman, 1758-1808 (Williamsburg, 1965);
40. William B. Allen, "Foreword," in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, I, xix-xxxii;
41. John T. Kirkland, "An Abridgement of the Life of Fisher Ames," Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., xliii-liii;
42. Bernard M. Bailyn, ed., The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles, and Letters during the Struggle over Ratification, part I: September 1787 to February 1788 (New York, 1993), 997;
43. Samuel Eliot Morison, "Squire Ames and Doctor Ames," New England Quarterly, 1 (Jan. 1928), 5-31;
44. and Elisha P. Douglass, "Fisher Ames, Spokesman for New England Federalism," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103 (Oct. 1959), 693-715. To be strictly accurate, Ames first entered public service as Dedham's delegate to a 1779 convention on wartime inflation during which he gave a speech attacking the very idea of price controls.
45. See Allen, "Foreword," xx.
46. Fisher Ames to Thomas Dwight, Jan. 17, 1794, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, II, 988-89;
47. Ames to Christopher Gore, Oct. 5, 1796, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., 1193-98;
48. Ames to George Richards Minot, May 29, 1789, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., I, 635-37;
49. Fisher Ames, "The Republican VIII," 1804, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., 329;
50. cf. Ames, "Dangers of American Democracy," 131-32.
51. Banner, To the Hartford Convention, 136, 252n7;
52. Marc M. Arkin, "Regionalism and the Religion Clauses: The Contribution of Fisher Ames," Buffalo Law Review, 47 (Spring 1999), 810-21;
53. Ames to Gore, Dec. 13, 1802, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, II, 1445.
54. Fisher Ames, Works of Fisher Ames (Boston, 1809).
55. In 1854 Ames's son issued an expanded version of the collection that included more of Ames's letters: Seth Ames, ed., Works of Fisher Ames. With a selection from his speeches and correspondence (2 vols., Boston, 1854).
56. A third edition, yet further expanded, is the source for citations to the Works of Fisher Ames in this article: William B. Allen, ed., Works of Fisher Ames (2 vols., Indianapolis, 1983).
57. Allen, "Foreword," xxx-xxxi.
58. For the argument that Ames's reputation was sent into final eclipse by the brilliantly acid pen of Henry Adams, exacting the last measure of family revenge against those Federalists - such as Ames - who had failed to support John Adams for president in the election of 1800, see Fischer, "Myth of the Essex Junto," 192-95.
59. Bernard M. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 55-93;
60. Cecilia Kenyon, "Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists on the Nature of Representative Government," William and Mary Quarterly, 12 (Jan. 1955), 13-14;
61. Edmund S. Morgan, "The American Revolution Considered as an Intellectual Movement," in Paths of American Thought, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Morton White (Boston, 1963), 26.
62. Plato, The Republic, trans. H. D. P. Lee (London, 1955), 236-86, 327-65, esp. 344-48;
63. H. C. Lodge, ed., The Works of Alexander Hamilton (9 vols., New York, 1885-1886), I, 114;
64. Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 56-57.
65. See also Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 181.
66. Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 133;
67. Marshall Smelser, "The Federalist Period as an Age of Passion," American Quarterly, 10 (Winter 1958), 391;
68. John R. Howe Jr., "Republican Thought and the Political Violence of the 1790s," American Quarterly, ibid., 19 (Summer 1967), 148-49;
69. Fischer, "Myth of the Essex Junto," 191.
70. Allen, "Foreword," xxi;
71. William Montague, "Memoir of Fisher Ames," in The Diocesan Register and the New England Calendar for the Year of Our Lord and Saviour 1812 (Dedham, 1811), 242-43.
72. William Montague was Dedham's Episcopal minister during Ames's retirement. Fisher Ames, "Laocoon II," in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, I, 197-209.
73. For the Federalist recognition of the significance of the French Revolution, see William C. Dowling, Literary Federalism in the Age of Jefferson: Joseph Dennie and the Port Folio, 1801-1811 (Columbia, S.C., 1999), 7-13, 42-45.
74. Fisher Ames, "The Republican I," 1804, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, I, 88.
75. Beginning with "Republican IV," Ames used this epigram at the beginning of each essay in the series, concluding with "The Republican XIII." Works of Fisher Ames, Ibid., 88n9.
76. Ames also employed the variant formulation, "Your passions and vices forbid you to be free." Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 130.
77. Dangers of American Liberty," Ibid., 120-82.
78. Fisher Ames, "Falkland I," 1802, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, I, 210;
79. Ames to Theodore Dwight, March 19, 1801, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., II, 1409, 1411;
80. Ames to Dwight Foster, Feb. 9, 1801, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., 1406-7;
81. Fisher Ames, "The Republican II," 1804, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., I, 89.
82. Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 130;
83. Ames, "Republican II," 91;
84. Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 131.
85. Fisher Ames, "The Republican X," 1804, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, I, 265-66.
86. Ames, for example, described the House debate on the Quaker Memorial on the slave trade as a "kind of forensic dispute - a matter of moonshine" that made South Carolina and Georgia "mad and furious" without achieving anything of value. Ames to Minot, March 23, 1790, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., 729-31.
87. Ames, "Republican X," 266, 268.
88. Fisher Ames, "Laocoon I," 1799, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, I, 194;
89. Fisher Ames, "Phocion II," 1801, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., 275;
90. Ames, "Laocoon I," 191-92;
91. Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 152;
92. Fisher Ames, "The Republican XII," 1804, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, I, 228;
93. Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 123, 161;
94. Ames, "Laocoon II," 199.
95. D. H. Meyer, The Instructed Conscience: The Shaping of the American National Ethic (Philadelphia, 1972), 24, 54-55, 66-67;
96. Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed., s.v. "passion," "licentiousness," "profligacy," "profligate."
97. Ames to John Rutledge, July 30, 1801, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, II, 1414;
98. Ames to Theodore Dwight, March 19, 1801, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., 1411;
99. Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 135, 153.
100. Ames to Theodore Dwight, March 19, 1801, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, II, 1411;
101. Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 137, 136.
102. For a description of Ames's hopes for the Palladium, see Ames to Jeremiah Smith, Dec. 14, 1802, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, II, 1451-52.
103. Fisher Ames, "Speech on the Jay Treaty," 1796, Works of Fisher Ames, ibid., 1145.
104. Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, 132;
105. Thomas, Liberator, 27.
106. In this, I am influenced by Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling, 136-37;
107. and Thomas, Liberator, 32-34. I do not, however, subscribe to John L. Thomas's position that Garrison disowned the revolutionary generation.
108. On Garrison's first venture into print, see Thomas, Liberator, 34-38;
109. and Mayer, All on Fire, 29.
110. Writers and works identified as literary influences on Garrison include: Felicia Hemans, William Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Lord Byron, William Cowper, and the evangelical novelists Maria Edgeworth and Hana Moore, according to Mayer, All on Fire, 27-29;
111. Timothy Pickering, Hemans, Benjamin Russell, and Caleb Cushing, according to Thomas, Liberator, 28-38;
112. Lyman Beecher, the Bible, Edward Everett, and Benjamin Lundy, according to Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling, 134-47;
113. George Bourne and Elizabeth Coltman Heyrick, according to John W. Christie and Dwight L. Dumond, George Bourne and The Book and Slavery Irreconcileable (Wilmington, 1969);
114. and Hemans, Pickering, and Harrison Gray Otis, according to Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, I, 42.
115. Newburyport Herald, April 23, 1823.
116. For attribution of this early pseudonymous editorial, see Thomas, Liberator, 38.
117. "To the Editor," Salem Gazette, July 27, 1824,
118. in The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. I: I Will Be Heard!, 1822-1835, ed. Walter M. Merrill (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 24-25.
119. Cf. Fisher Ames, "The Mire of a Democracy," 1805, in Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Allen, I, 3-5.
120. "To the Editor," Salem Gazette, Aug. 6, 1824, in Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, I, ed. Merrill, 27-28.
121. See also Thomas, Liberator, 41, 33-34.
122. "To the Editor," Boston Courier, July 23, 1827, in Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, I, ed. Merrill, 52-56.
123. Merrill notes the accuracy of Garrison's quotations from Ames in the letter. Boston Courier, Ibid., 57n3.
124. Boston Courier, Ibid., 52-53.
125. Boston Courier, Ibid., 54-61.
126. For contemporaneous comments showing the importance of the speech, see Douglass, "Fisher Ames," 708;
127. and Morison, "Squire Ames and Doctor Ames," 16.
128. Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, I, 132.
129. The passage itself can be found in Ames, "Speech on the Jay Treaty," 1165. Garrison's citation is accurate except for minor points of grammar and the addition of the pointed phrase "liberty and oppression."
130. Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, I, 133-34;
131. Mayer, All on Fire, 58, 75.
132. Garrison's children suggest that the first sentence ("On this subject, . . .") was borrowed from Charles James Fox as cited in George Bourne, The Book and Slavery Irreconcileable (Philadelphia, 1816), 4.
133. Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, I, n.p., following xiv.
134. For an account that traces to George Bourne many of the phrases that Garrison made famous, including "immediate emancipation" and "manstealing," see Christie and Dumond, George Bourne and The Book and Slavery Irreconcileable.
135. See also Elizabeth Coltman Heyrick, Immediate, not Gradual Emancipation; or. An Inquiry into the Shortest, Safest, and Most Effectual Means of Getting Rid of West Indian Slavery (London, 1824).
136. Ames, "Speech on the Jay Treaty," 1174-75.
137. Constitution of the New-England Anti-Slavery Society: with an Address to the Public (Boston, 1832), 15, 16.
138. The quotation can be found in Ames, "Speech on the Jay Treaty," 1174-75. The only significant variation is Garrison's substitution of "they" for Ames's "it" so that the second sentence's referent becomes "hearts," not "nature."
139. For example, Garrison described a tribute to Alexander Hamilton by Daniel Webster as "a tribute to the mightiest intellect which has ever been developed in this country, by die mightiest intellect which now exists in the land." Liberator, April 2, 1831.
140. Liberator, Ibid., Oct. 18, 1834 ;
141. "To Peleg Sprague," Liberator, ibid., Sept. 5, 1835,
142. in The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, vol. II: A House Divided against Itself: 1836-1840, ed. Louis Ruchames (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 511;
143. Thomas, Liberator, 183-84;
144. James G. Birney to Lewis Tappan, Nov. 28, 1835, in Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831-1857, ed. Dwight L. Dumond (2 vols., Gloucester, 1966), I, 274;
145. Birney to Tappan, Sept. 14, 1837, Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831-1857, ibid., 425;
146. Gamaliel Bailey to Birney, Oct. 14, 1837, Letters of James Gillespie Birney, 1831-1857, ibid., 428;
147. "To Peleg Sprague," 510-11.
148. Leonard L. Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York, 1970), 12-13;
149. William Lloyd Garrison to William H. Scott, the Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, April 20, 1836, Liberator, June 4, 1836, in Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, II, ed. Ruchames, 87-88.
150. For the quotations, see Ames, "Laocoon I," 189-90, 191.
151. Garrison to Scott, April 20, 1836, Liberator, June 4, 1836, in Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, II, ed. Ruchames, 87, 88.
152. For the quotation, see Ames, "Dangers of American Liberty," 129-30. In this quotation, Garrison omitted the words "and vices" from the concluding epigram and took more than his usual limited liberties with Ames's punctuation.
153. Walters, "Erotic South," 181.
154. For an especially astute discussion of the rise of sympathetic moral reasoning, see Clark, "'Sacred Rights of the Weak,'" 475-87, esp. 478.
155. Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: Woman's Sphere in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, 1977);
156. Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, 1978), 143-96;
157. Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980), 185-232, 265-88;
158. Sanchez-Eppler, Touching Liberty.
159. Liberator, March 1, 1850; "To Peleg Sprague," 513.
160. For the same accusation of southern hypcocrisy, see William Lloyd Garrison, "Ought We Not to Blush!," Boston Evening Transcript, Oct. 13, 1830.
161. Liberator, April 2, 1831;
162. Letter of Thomas Day, Esq., 1776, Liberator, ibid., April 16, 1831;
163. "Address to Slaveholders of the United States by 'M,'" Liberator, ibid., July 2, 1831;
164. Letter from the Boston Yankee, 1819,
165. Boston Yankee, ibid., Jan. 29, 1831;
166. Letter of Paul Cuffee, March 27, 1831, Boston Yankee, ibid., April 9, 1831.
167. G. B., "Comments on James A. Thome's 'Address to the American Anti-Slavery Society,'" Boston Yankee, ibid., May 10, 1834;
168. James A. Thome, "Address to the American Anti-Slavery Society," quoted Boston Yankee, ibid., May 17, 1834.
169. Thome was one of the Lane Seminary Rebels; G. B. was, in all likelihood, George Bourne. See also James A. Thome, Boston Yankee, ibid., Oct. 20, 1832.
170. "To Peleg Sprague," 506-7;
171. Letter from the Boston Yankee, 1819,
172. Liberator, Jan. 29, 1831;
173. Liberator, ibid., Aug. 13, 1831.
174. Liberator, Ibid., July 30, 1831.
175. Walters, "Erotic South," 182.
176. Walters, "Erotic South," Ibid., 181;
177. Liberator, Feb. 5, 1831.
178. For a discussion of the Act of June 22, 1786, and the attempts to repeal it, see Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, I, 254.
179. For the text of the law, see Franklin Johnson, The Development of State Legislation Concerning the Free Negro (1919; Westport, 1979), 123-24.
180. Liberator, June 11, May 7, June 11, 1831.
181. John P. Bigelow, "The Marriage Law," Liberator, ibid., April 30, 1831.
182. Fischer, Revolution of American Conservatism, xi.