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Revolution and Regeneration: Life Cycle and the Historical Vision of the Generation of 1776: Notes

Revolution and Regeneration: Life Cycle and the Historical Vision of the Generation of 1776
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Notes

table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Foreword to the Reissue
  7. Preface
  8. Introduction: Life Cycle and the Revolutionary Generation
  9. Chapter One: A History All Our Own: Identity, 1763–1776
  10. Chapter Two: A History without Parallel: Intimacy, 1776–1789
  11. Chapter Three: History as Process vs. History as Order: Generativity, 1789–1815
  12. Chapter Four: The Renunciation of History: Ego Integrity, 1800–1840
  13. Conclusion: Life Cycle and Historical Achievement
  14. Notes
  15. Note on Method and Materials
  16. Index

Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. Erikson, Childhood and Society, rev. ed. (New York, 1963), 261–69; Erikson, “Identity Crisis in Autobiographical Perspective,” in Erikson, Life History and the Historical Moment (New York, 1975), 21. A bibliography of Erikson’s works appears in Robert Coles and John J. Fitzpatrick, “The Writings of Erik Erikson,” Psychohistory Review 5 (1976): 42–46.

2. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 263; Theodore Lidz, The Person, His Development through the Life Cycle (New York, 1968), 81; Daniel J. Levinson et al., The Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York, 1978), 317–40.

3. James Kirby Martin, Men in Rebellion (New Brunswick, N.J., 1973), 152–54, finds the mean age of revolutionary leaders only four years below that of Loyalist leaders; the “young revolutionaries” were, of course, at the lower end of the former scale.

4. On the concept of the “historical generation,” see Karl Mannheim, “The Problem of Generations,” in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London, 1952), 276–322. There exist psychological studies of actual historical generations, such as Peter Loewenberg, “The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort,” American Historical Review 76 (1971): 1457–1502, or, closer in subject to the issues at hand, Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, 1970), 279–81; Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (New York, 1976), 19–37; and George B. Forgie, Patricide in the House Divided: A Psychological Interpretation of Lincoln and His Age (New York, 1979). These are not based upon the concept of life cycle, however, but are variants of psychoanalysis. Carol Berkin, Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist (New York, 1974), 8–9, suggests the utility of a “youth-young adulthood-maturity-old age” categorization.

5. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, “The Founding Fathers: Young Men of the Revolution,” Political Science Quarterly 76 (1961): 203–6; David Hackett Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (New York, 1969), xvi–xviii and ff.

6. Annie Kriegel, “Generational Difference: The History of an Idea,” Daedalus 107 (Fall 1979): 29. Pauline Maier compares the generation of 1776 with the “old revolutionaries” in The Old Revolutionaries: Political Lives in the Age of Samuel Adams (New York, 1980), in which see 280–81 for the concept of apprenticeship.

7. On Lee, see Oliver P. Chitwood, Richard Henry Lee: Statesman of the Revolution (Morgantown, W.Va., 1967), 14; on Sherman, Roger S. Boardman, Roger Sherman: Signer and Statesman ([1938] New York, 1971), 53–54; on McKean, G. S. Rowe, Thomas McKean: The Shaping of an American Republicanism (Boulder, Colo., 1978), 17–29; on Boudinot, George A. Boyd, Elias Boudinot: Patriot and Statesman (Princeton, 1952), 20; on Belknap, George B. Kirsch, Jeremy Belknap: A Biography (New York, 1982), 7–10, 13–17, 29–31. As a mature individual, Belknap joined the patriot cause (Kirsch, Belknap, 51).

8. Robert V. Wells, The Population of the British Colonies in America before 1776 (Princeton, 1975), 117, 269, 272, 284. In a study of this sort, one must be sensitive to the dangers of “trickle-down” history—the history that carelessly reads the ideas of elites for the aspirations of masses. See Jesse Lemisch, “The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up,” in Barton Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York, 1968), 3–45. The remedy for this error has nothing to do with ideology. One must simply limit the generality of one’s conclusions to the range of sources used in the study.

9. Erik Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity (New York, 1974), 33.

10. Peter Shaw, American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), tackles the anomaly of the inflated rhetoric of the revolutionaries.

11. No scholar has questioned the fact that the revolutionary generation studied and used historical materials; see H. Trevor Colbourn, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (New York, 1974), 5 ff., and Henry Steele Commager, “Leadership in Eighteenth-Century America and Today,” Daedalus 90 (Fall 1961): 655–56, among the many studies of the revolutionaries’ historical ideas. The question remains: how integral were the revolutionaries’ historical ideas to their view of themselves? For some older revolutionaries, at certain times, historical arguments seem to have been an expected form of window-dressing; see Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 79–80. And not every member of my young men of 1776 turned to history to comfort, explain, prompt, and persuade. Recent biographies of William Paterson and Henry (Light Horse) Lee, to name two of this description, do show the rough outlines of life cycle and its challenges. If Paterson and Lee saw the law and the art of war as their own mirrors of the soul, their choices do not deny the validity of my thesis about other young men of 1776 who did think in historical terms.

CHAPTER ONE

1. Michael Kammen, A Season of Youth: The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (New York, 1978), 198–201; Edmund Randolph, History of Virginia (1813), ed. Arthur H. Shaffer (Charlottesville, 1970), 199.

2. John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law (1765), in Robert J. Taylor, ed., The Papers of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1977–), 1: 113, 114, a draft of which appears on 1: 108–11.

3. James Wilson (untitled address, 1768), mentioned in Charles Page Smith, James Wilson, Founding Father (Chapel Hill, 1956), 35–36; Philip Freneau, Rising Glory of America (1772), in Freneau, Poems Relating to the American Revolution (New York, 1865), 8, 16.

4. Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted . . . (1775), in Harold C. Syrett, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1961–), 1: 122; and see also Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government (Stanford, 1970), 26–27.

5. Thomas Jefferson, Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774; London, 1775), 7–9, 18; Jefferson, “Declaration of the Causes of taking Up Arms” [fair copy for the committee] (1775), in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, 1950–), 1: 199.

6. Lester H. Cohen, The Revolutionary Histories (Ithaca, N.Y., 1980), 52–53, 82–83, and ff., finds that the revolutionaries’ histories were Puritan in their dedication and ethicality but wholly secular in their view of cause and contingency. He does not restrict his remarks to the younger generation but does apply them to Ramsay and others among our “young men.”

7. Colbourn, Lamp of Experience, 4, 185; Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (New York, 1972), 30–31.

The discovery that the youngest of the revolutionaries separated American history from English history does not dispute the Renaissance humanism recently discerned by J. G. A. Pocock, John Murrin, and others in American revolutionary ideology. No one would contend that Americans were literally faithful to their historical models, whether drawn from Burgh and the Commonwealth men, Harrington, or even Machiavelli. The severing of historical ties by Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, and the rest did not mean that the lessons of the past, including those digested and reiterated by earlier scholars, were worthless. Insofar as Pocock can show the lines of development of Florentine civic thought, through the writings of mid-seventeenth-century English reformers, later “country” advocates, and, finally, our own revolutionaries, my argument does not undercut his. Virtue and corruption were indeed watchwords among this generation of young men, though they had consciously cut the historical ties which, in fact, brought these concepts into their culture. See Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975), 306–52, and Murrin, “The Great Inversion, or Court versus Country,” in Pocock, ed., Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, 1980), 368–454.

8. Thomas Hutchinson, The History . . . of Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1754), 1: xxix.

9. William Smith, Jr., The History of New York (1756; New York, 1814), 335.

10. James Logan, “Of the State of the British Plantations in America, A Memorial” (1732), ed. Joseph E. Johnson, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 60 (1936): 127; William Keith, The History of the British Plantations in America, Part I (London, 1738), 7; William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the British Settlements in North America, (1748; Boston, 1755), 2: 17, 34; [Benjamin Franklin, with Richard Jackson], An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania . . . (London, 1759), 5.

11. Richard Bland, An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies (1766; reprint, Williamsburg, 1922), 6; James Otis, Jr., Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston, 1764), in Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 1: 429–30, 441; Patrick Henry to Benjamin Rush, 1775, recalled by Rush in “Travels through Life” (1800), in The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, ed. George W. Corner (Princeton, N.J., 1948), 111.

12. The debates were recorded in John Adams’s Journal, June-November 1774, reprinted in Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (Washington, D.C., 1921–36), 1: 18–23. The delegates’ views of American history reported by Adams generally corresponded to ideas expressed by the delegates out of doors. See, for example, on Lee, Chitwood, Lee, 83. Lee was as ardent an advocate of independence as Adams or Jefferson, yet, unlike the latter two men, he had reached full emotional maturity before the final crisis. He did not envision an independent American history, because his already established adult identity required no such construction. On the cul-de-sac in historical protests based upon the English constitution, see Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 507–8.

13. Merrill Peterson, Adams and Jefferson: A Revolutionary Dialogue (New York, 1978), 13–14.

14. Brackenridge’s portion of “Rising Glory” (1771), in Daniel Marder, ed., A Hugh Henry Brackenridge Reader (Pittsburgh, 1970), 58; Erikson, Childhood and Society, 264–65, and generally, Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York, 1968).

15. Erik Erikson, Young Man Luther (New York, 1958), 170–222. On social control by parents, see Greven, Four Generations, 261–92; Daniel Scott Smith, “Parental Power and Marriage Patterns; An Analysis of Historical Trends in Hingham, Massachusetts,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 35 (1973): 419–28. On later maturation, see Peter Laslett, “Age at Menarche in Europe since the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 2 (Autumn 1971): 221–36; and Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family, 2d ed. (New York, 1977), 86 ff. On extended adolescence, see Ross W. Beales, Jr., “In Search of the Historical Child: Miniature Adulthood and Youth in Colonial New England,” American Quarterly 27 (October 1975): 394; N. Ray Hiner, “Adolescence in Eighteenth Century America,” History of Childhood Quarterly 2 (1975): 254; and generally, Vivian C. Fox, “Is Adolescence a Phenomenon of Modern Times?” History of Childhood Quarterly 5 (1977): 271–90.

16. Marvin Zahniser, ed., “Edward Rutledge to His Son, August 2, 1796,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 64 (1963): 65–72; Peter Shaw, The Character of John Adams (Chapel Hill, 1976), 65. The rite of passage into politics during the Revolution was particularly tumultuous, but the impact of the passage was not altered. See Charles S. Sydnor, American Revolutionaries in the Making (New York, 1975), 21–33, and Rhys Isaac, “Dramatizing the Ideology of Revolution: Popular Mobilization in Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 33 (1977): 357–85.

17. Myles Cooper, The Patriots of North America [1776], reprinted in Magazine of History, extra no. 27 (1914): 825.

18. Lyman H. Butterfield et al., eds. The Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 3: 278–79. The author is indebted to Peter Shaw’s The Character of John Adams for the thesis that Adams was, as his contemporaries understood, driven by ambition. Shaw’s prose style is an inspiration in itself, which I am pleased to acknowledge.

19. James Thomas Flexner, Young Hamilton: A Biography (New York, 1978), 3–107.

20. Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson (1823), ed. Dumas Malone (New York, 1959), 21, 22, 24, 26; Merrill Peterson. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (New York, 1970), chap. 2; Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York, 1974), 19–38; John Marshall, An Autobiographical Sketch by John Marshall (1827), ed. John Stokes Adams (Ann Arbor, 1937), 5.

21. John Adams, Earliest Diary of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 71; Jefferson to Ebenezer Hazard, April 1775, Boyd, ed., Papers of Jefferson, 1: 164. See also editor’s headnote to Adams-Sewall letters, 1766–67, in Taylor, ed., Papers of John Adams, 1: 176.

22. Timothy Pickering to John Clark, June 15, 1774, cited in Gerald Clarfield, Timothy Pickering and the American Republic (Pittsburgh, 1980), 16; James Madison to William Bradford, November 9, 1772, William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal, eds., The Papers of James Madison (Chicago and Charlottesville, 1962–), 1: 75; Bradford to Madison, May 27, 1773, Papers of Madison, 1: 86; James Wilson, Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament (Philadelphia, 1774). Alexander Hamilton’s Congress Vindicated . . . (1774) and Farmer Refuted (1775) gained great applause among the revolutionaries; see John C. Miller, Alexander Hamilton and the Growth of the New Nation (New York, 1964), 10. On Gerry, see George Athan Billias, Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and Republican Statesman (New York, 1976), 22.

23. Marvin Zahniser, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney: Founding Father (Chapel Hill, 1967), 14; Rush, “Travels,” 46–47, 62, 76–77; and also see David F. Hawke, Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly (Indianapolis, 1971), 137–38.

24. John Adams, Diary entry for October 17, 1774, Diary and Autobiography, 2: 154; Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 26.

25. Philip Freneau, “Satires against the Tories,” quoted in Jacob Axelrod, Philip Freneau (Austin, Tex., 1967), 32. On the parental imagery of the revolutionaries, see Edwin Burrows and Michael Wallace, “The American Revolution: The Ideology and Psychology of National Liberation,” Perspectives in American History 6 (1972): 200–215; and Winthrop Jordan, “Familial Politics: Thomas Paine and the Killing of the King 1776,” Journal of American History 60 (September 1973): 294–308. Both of these are nontechnical adaptations of psychoanalytic theory; more vigorous application of this theory, stressing, naturally, the unresolved Oedipus complex, would lead to similar conclusions. Paranoia growing from fear of parental anger might result in “projection” of the kind described above. Closer to this approach is John J. Waters, “James Otis, Jr.: An Ambivalent Revolutionary,” History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1973): 142–50. Lawrence Henry Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution (New York, 1954), 232–33, among others, has defended the propriety of English behavior in the crisis.

The propaganda impact of the Declaration was not as great as the revolutionaries hoped—and I believe they suspected this would be the case. See Robert R. Palmer, “The Impact of the American Revolution Abroad,” paper presented at the Fourth Symposium on the Bicentennial of the American Revolution, sponsored by the Library of Congress, May 8, 1975. With this in mind, we may propose less contrived and more compelling motives in the author of the document.

26. Richard M. Rollins, The Long Journey of Noah Webster (Philadelphia, 1980), 23–24; Erikson, “Identity Crisis in Autobiographical Perspective,” 19.

27. Daniel J. Boorstin, America and the Image of Europe (New York, 1960), 66–78, discusses these methods of reshaping the past.

28. Brackenridge quoted in Daniel Marder, Hugh Henry Brackenridge (New York, 1967), 34–35; Rush, “Address to Subscribers to United Company for Promoting American Manufacturers,” March 16, 1775, in Hawke, Benjamin Rush, 129; John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, in Burnett, ed., Letters of the Members of the Continental Congress, 1: 526.

29. William Bradford to James Madison, March 4, 1774, Hutchinson and Rachal, eds., Papers of Madison, 1: 109; Bradford to Madison, October 17, 1774, Papers of Madison, 1: 126; David Humphreys, The Glory of America (Philadelphia, 1783), The Happiness of America (Philadelphia, 1786), and other works extolled the “genius” of Americans. See also David Ramsay, An Oration on the Advantages of American Independence (Charleston, 1778), 5–6, 8. This concept was soon taken for granted here; on the “genius” of American law, see, for example, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry to Talleyrand, April 3, 1798, in William Stinchcombe and Charles T. Cullen, eds., Papers of John Marshall (Chapel Hill, 1974–), 3: 447.

One might argue, following the work of Hans Kohut and others at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, that the extolling of “genius” by the revolutionaries was the mark of youthful narcissism. The vast self-confidence and self-absorption of the revolutionaries argues for this conclusion, but one must note that their direction of energy and care to public concerns was then a successful displacement of love object from self to commonwealth.

30. Douglass Adair, “Fame and the Founding Fathers,” in H. Trevor Colbourn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers: Essays by Douglass Adair (New York, 1974), 7, 11; Jay to McDougall, April 27, 1776, in Richard B. Morris, John Jay: The Making of A Revolutionary (New York, 1976), 263.

31. Erik Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle, Psychological Issues 1 (1959): 89.

32. John M. Murrin, “Anglicization and Identity: The Colonial Experience, the Revolution, and the Dilemma of American Nationalism,” paper presented at the Organization of American Historians, Denver, Colorado, April 1974, traces the problems historians have had with the concept of revolutionary nationalism. Any ideology, and “nationalism” is no exception, is an attempt to make sense of reality. As with all powerful intellectual movements, the invention of a new ideology takes on a life of its own and motivates new forms of action. Erikson has written: “In some periods of his history, and in some phases of his life cycle, man needs (until we invent something better) a new ideological orientation as surely and as sorely as he must have air and food. . . . The total perspective created by ideological simplification reveals its strength by the dominance it exerts on the seeming logic of historical events, and by its influence on the identity formation of individuals” (Young Man Luther, 22). One may view the creation of a separate American history as “ideological simplification.”

CHAPTER TWO

1. A succinct statement of these beliefs is Douglass Adair, “Experience Must Be Our Only Guide: History, Democratic Theory, and the United States Constitution” (1966), in Colbourn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers, 107–23, but see also Bailyn, Ideological Origins, 85, and Stow Persons, “Cyclical Theory of History in Eighteenth-Century America,” American Quarterly 5 (April 1954): 147–67.

2. Although the internal dynamics of state and confederation politics are at this publishing very controversial issues for historians, no one can doubt the tumultuousness of this era. See Jack N. Rakove, The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (New York, 1979), and Jackson T. Main, Political Parties before the Constitution (Chapel Hill, 1973), for summaries of the divisive issues.

3. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 264–66; Levinson, Seasons of a Man’s Life, 71–73.

4. Jay to Egbert Benson, September 12, 1783, Henry P. Johnston, ed., Papers and Public Correspondence of John Jay (New York, 1890–93), 3: 75; Edward Rutledge to Jay, November 12, 1786, Correspondence of Jay, 3: 217; Marshall, Autobiographical Sketch, 8; Jefferson, Autobiography, 88–89; Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 397.

5. John Adams, “Memorial to their High Mightinesses, the States General . . . (1781), in Charles Francis Adams, ed., Life and Works of John Adams (Boston 1851–56), 7: 397; Joel Barlow, Address to the Society of the Cincinnati, July 4th, 1787, in Hezekiah Niles, ed., Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America (Baltimore, 1822), 146; David Ramsay, History of the Revolution of South Carolina from a British Province to an Independent State, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1784–85), dedication.

6. Ramsay, History, 1: 7, 12, 19, 69, 126, 217, 2: 176, 196, 247; Ramsay to Benjamin Rush, February 11, 1786, in Robert L. Brunhouse, ed., “David Ramsay, 1749–1815, Selections from His Writings,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 55 (1965): pt. 4, 98.

7. Webster, A Collection of Essays, on . . . Moral, Political, Historical, and Literary Subjects (Boston, 1790), 100; Humphreys, An Oration on the Political Situation . . . in the Year 1789 (1789), in William K. Bottoroff, ed., Miscellaneous Works of David Humphreys, (1804; Gainesville, Fla., 1968) 340; Humphreys et al., The Anarchiad: A New England Poem (New Haven, 1787), iv, 1, 2–7, 23–24, 61.

8. Joel Barlow, An Oration delivered at . . . Hartford . . . at the Society of the Cincinnati . . . 4th of July, 1787 (Hartford, 1787), 4.

9. Madison to Washington, April 16, 1787, Hutchinson and Rachal, eds., Papers of Madison, 10: 383. On the persistence of familial language of authority, see Philip Greven, The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child-Rearing, Religious Experience, and the Self in Early America (New York, 1977), 353, 359; and Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 478–79. Excessive attempts to impose order (for example, the Cincinnati) were resisted, however. See Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783 (Chapel Hill, 1979), chap. 8.

10. Randolph to Washington, November 24, 1786, in Moncure D. Conway, Omitted Chapters of History . . . in the Life and Papers of Edmund Randolph (New York, 1888), 60; Washington to Randolph, upon receiving a nomination to the federal Constitutional Convention, December 21, 1786, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, (Washington, D.C., 1939), 24: 120.

11. Brodie, Jefferson, 207; Billias, Gerry, 147; Pinckney to James Madison, March 28, 1789, Hutchinson and Rachal, eds., Papers of Madison, 12: 35; Levinson, Seasons of a Man’s Life, 73–74; Flexner, Hamilton, 429–35.

12. Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Modern Chivalry (1784–85), Part I, ed. Claude M. Newlin (New York, 1962), 76–77; Joel Barlow to Noah Webster, January 30, 1779, in Charles B. Todd, The Life and Letters of Joel Barlow (New York, 1886), 18; Noah Webster, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language (Hartford, 1785), 13–14. Hope and disappointment were mingled, for these writers had expected the Revolution to stimulate the arts. See Joseph J. Ellis, After the Revolution (New York, 1979), 29.

13. Jay to John Adams, May 4, 1786, Johnston, ed., Correspondence of Jay, 3: 194; Adams to King, June 14, 1786, quoted in Robert Ernst, Rufus King: American Federalist (Chapel Hill, 1968), 68.

14. Ramsay to Benjamin Rush, April 8, 1777, Brunhouse, ed., “Ramsay, Selections,” 54. The important point here is not that the young became federalists while the old joined the antifederalist ranks (though some age dispersion did appear) but that the old revolutionaries clung to comparative history while the younger revolutionaries were freed (or compelled) to work out the implications of their own, earlier, separation of American history from its precursors. The young federalists were encouraged by their discovery of our historical incomparability to plunge into thorough constitutional reform. Young antifederalists were the first of their faction to grasp the force of the new history, and they tried to turn it to their own advantage.

15. Timothy Dwight, “Columbia, A Song,” American Museum 3 (June 1787): 484, but compare his dismal conclusions in America; or, A Poem on the Settlement of the British Colonies (New Haven, 1780). Joel Barlow, The Vision of Columbus (1787), 5th ed. (Paris, 1798), 9: 264, 8: 215–16; Barlow, Oration . . . at . . . Hartford, 6; Benjamin Rush, Thoughts upon the Mode of Education . . . (Philadelphia, 1786), quoted in Allen O. Hansen, Liberalism and American Education (New York, 1926), 49–57; Rush to Jeremy Belknap, June 6, 1791, Lyman H. Butterfield, ed., The Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, 1951) 1: 583.

16. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781–87), ed. William Peden (Chapel Hill, 1953), 117–20, 148, 192.

17. John Adams, Defense of the Constitutions of the . . . United States, 3 vols. (London, 1787), 1: ii, xxv. A different reading of the Defense is found in Shaw, Character of John Adams, 206–24.

18. Alexander Hamilton, “The Continentalist” (1782), Syrett, ed., Papers of Hamilton, 3: 103.

19. James Madison to the Constitutional Convention, June 21, 1787; Wilson to the convention, June 20, 1787; Madison to the convention, August 13, 1787; Charles Pinckney to the convention, June 25, 1787, in Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 4 vols., rev. ed. (New Haven, 1937), 1: 356–57, 337, 343, 2: 268–69, 1: 398–401.

20. Noah Webster, An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (1787), in Paul L. Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1888), 29–35. An egocentric nationalistic history was not, of course, the only expression of this longing for an escape from the toils of the cyclical theory of history. A second line of reasoning lay in the lexicography of a unique American language. This effort was led by Webster. The attempt to fashion a superior and incorruptible republican educational system also grew from the fear of earlier republics’ fates, and Jefferson and Rush, among other young revolutionaries, would assume the direction of this project in later years.

21. John Jay, Address to the People of the State of New York on the Subject of the Constitution (1787), in Ford, ed., Pamphlets, 70; John Jay, Address to the People of the State of New York (1788), in Johnston, ed., Correspondence of Jay, 3: 296.

22. [Madison and Hamilton], Federalist No. 18, The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York, 1961), 122–28.

23. Elbridge Gerry, Observations on the New Constitution . . . (Boston, 1788), 3–4.

24. Theodore Sedgwick to Massachusetts ratification convention, January 14, 1788; Fisher Ames to convention, January 15, 1788, Rufus King to convention, January 15, 1788, in Jonathan Elliot, ed., Debates on the Constitution, (Washington, D.C., 1836), 2: 4, 8, 10, 12, 18, 19, 20.

25. Rufus King to Massachusetts convention, January 21, 1788; John Gorham to convention, January 21, 1788, Debates on the Constitution, 2: 55, 68–69.

26. Fisher Ames to Massachusetts convention, January 25, 1788; John Nason to convention, February 1, 1788, Debates on the Constitution, 2: 101, 135–37.

27. James Wilson to Pennsylvania ratification convention, November 26, 1787, Debates on the Constitution, 2: 422–23.

28. Patrick Henry to Virginia ratification convention, June 5, 1788, Debates on the Constitution, 3: 45–46, 53, 62. Was age, and with it, differences in stage of life, a cause of different views of the Constitution? The latest essay on the subject, Maier’s Old Revolutionaries, 285–92, finds that different generations had different perspectives. She focuses on the Virginia ratification debates between Henry and Randolph to make her point. Although she does not use the lifecycle theory explicitly here, her argument does support my conclusions.

29. Edmund Randolph to Virginia convention, June 6, 1788, Debates on the Constitution, 3: 66, 69, 75.

30. James Madison to Virginia convention, June 6–7, 1788, Debates on the Constitution, 3: 87, 92, 129–32.

31. Patrick Henry to Virginia convention, June 7, 9, 1788, Debates on the Constitution, 3: 143, 160, 162, 185.

32. James Wilson, “Address,” Account of the Grand Federal Procession, Philadelphia, July 4, 1788 (Philadelphia, 1788), 14; Wilson, On the Study of Law in the United States (1790–91 lectures), in Randolph G. Adams, ed., Selected Political Essays of James Wilson (New York, 1930), 186; also see Smith, James Wilson, 270–77.

33. George Nicholas to Madison, November 2, 1789, Hutchinson and Rachal, eds., Papers of Madison, 12: 445–46.

34. Hamilton quoted in Stourzh, Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government, 172; see also Felix Gilbert, To the Farewell Address: The Beginnings of American Foreign Policy (New York, 1965), 127–34.

35. Wilson to Pennsylvania convention, December 12, 1787, quoted in Smith, James Wilson, 277; see also Adrienne Koch, Jefferson and Madison: The Great Collaboration (New York, 1964), 141–42, Jefferson, Autobiography, 86–87, and Peter C. Hoffer, “The Constitutional Crisis and the Rise of a Nationalistic View of History in America, 1785–1789,” New York History 52 (July 1971): 305–23.

CHAPTER THREE

1. Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York, 1970), 568.

2. On the educational aspirations of this generation there can be no question of sincerity or commitment. For example, Jefferson to J. Barrister, October 15, 1785, in E. W. Knight, ed., A Documentary History of Education in the South before i860, (Chapel Hill, 1950), 2: 5–6; Roy J. Honeywell, The Educational Work of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1964), 140; and Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 206. Unfortunately, many of their schemes failed. See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, 1980), 185–232; and Joseph F. Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present (New York, 1977), chap. 2.

3. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 266–68; Levinson, Seasons of a Man’s Life, 253–54.

4. Barlow to Noah Webster, August 31, 1782, in Todd, Barlow, 42; Ramsay to Belknap, August 11, 1792, in Brunhouse, ed., “Ramsay, Selections,” 133; Barlow, Remarks on Reception of the Letter to the Centinel, 1800 [?], in Todd, Barlow, 169; John Marshall “To A Freeholder,” October 2, 1798, Stinchcombe and Cullen, eds., Papers of Marshall, 3: 504.

5. John Quincy Adams reflecting on the 1790s in An Eulogy on the Life and Character of James Monroe (Boston, 1831), 6, 47–49. On the effect of the French Revolution upon American political behavior, see Paul Goodman, “The First American Party System,” in William N. Chambers and Walter D. Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems (New York, 1967), 74–75. Richard B. Morris, The Emerging Nations and the American Revolution (New York, 1970), 68–73, and Robert R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution, Part I: The Challenge (Princeton, 1959), 487ff., describe the French revolutionary fervor here. On the general influence of “revolutionary romanticism” in the 1790s, see Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York, 1976), 223–51.

6. Michael Kammen, People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization (New York, 1973), 97–102. Just now (1983) the origin of these biformities is controversial. Scholars recently have identified Florentine civic humanists, English Whig constitutional reformers and reactionary Tories, Scottish moral philosophers (among whom sentimentalists wrestled with rationalists), country party spokesmen, and radical commonwealthmen as the source of our revolutionary ideas. For the roll, see Daniel Walker Howe, “European Sources of Political Ideas in Jeffersonian America,” Reviews in American History 10 (1982): 28–44.

7. Jefferson to Madison, August 28, 1789, September 6, 1789, Hutchinson and Rachal, eds., Papers of Madison, 12: 361, 382–87; Hugh Henry Brackenridge, “Fourth of July Oration, 1793,” in Marder, Brackenridge, 52.

8. [James Madison], National Gazette, September 26, 1792; [Philip Freneau], National Gazette, November 14, 1791. On Freneau’s fear of monarchical forces, a very common emotion among the Francophiles, see Philip M. Marsh, The Works of Philip Freneau: A Critical Study (Metuchen, N.J., 1968), 66ff.

9. Jefferson to D’Invernois, February 6, 1795, Andrew Lipscomb and A. E. Bergh, eds., Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, D.C., 1903), 9: 300; Jefferson to Barlow, December 10, 1807, Writings of Jefferson, 11: 400–401. Robert R. Palmer has judged 1795 as a turning point for American sympathy for France; thereafter popular support for France declined (The Age of Democratic Revolution, II: The Struggle [Princeton, 1964], 538, 540). Jefferson remained optimistic about French prospects well into the 1790s, possibly because he was getting French news months late and usually refused to believe the worst about the French leaders; see Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty (Boston, 1962), 38ff.

10. Jefferson to Edmund Pendleton, July 24, 1791, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., Writings of Jefferson, 18: 187.

11. [Freneau], National Gazette, September 14, 1793; [Madison], National Gazette, September 26, 1793; Edmund Randolph, A Vindication of Mr. Randolph’s Resignation (1795), ed. P. V. Daniel, Jr. (Richmond, 1855), 74. On the larger Jay Treaty debate, see Jerald A. Combs, The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground of the Founding Fathers (Berkeley, 1970), 159–88.

12. This view of the novelty and “modernity” of Republican opposition is traced in William N. Chambers, Political Parties in the New Nation (New York, 1963). James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Acts and American Civil Liberties, rev. ed. (Ithaca, 1963), 112–55, documents the fury of the Republicans.

13. George Nicholas, A Letter . . . On the Alien and Sedition Acts (Philadelphia, 1799), 4, 20, 36–37; see also St. George Tucker, A Letter . . . Respecting the Alien and Sedition Acts (n.p., 1798), 12–26, 29; and The Speech of Edward Livingston on . . . the Alien and Sedition Acts (Philadelphia, 1798), 4–5, 8, 16.

14. [James Madison], Report of the Resolution of the Virginia House on the Alien and Sedition Acts (1799–1800), Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison (New York, 1900–1910), 6: 348, 352. See also Madison’s Address of the General Assembly to the People . . . of Virginia, Writings of Madison, 6: 338.

15. [Thomas Jefferson], “Draft of Kentucky Resolutions,” in Paul L. Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, (New York, 1892–99), 7: 288–309; Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, March 29, 1801, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., Writings of Jefferson, 10: 252. On the authorship and transmission of the Resolutions, see Koch, Jefferson and Madison, 174–211, and James Morton Smith, “The Grass Roots Origins of the Kentucky Resolutions,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 27 (1970): 221–45.

16. This impression cannot be fully documented here, though one or two examples may make the argument clearer. James Callender’s animadversions upon the Adams administration’s sponsorship of the seditious libel law took the form of a history of the Federalists’ adoration of Britain and aristocracy, but the historical material in his Prospect Before Us (1800) was not meant to express any attachment to the past. Perhaps this is because Callender, like Burk and Duane, was an immigrant. On the other hand, William Branch Giles was a native-born Virginian, and though the same age as Callender, had roots in Virginia’s economic and social elite and therefore her history. Yet when he stood in the Congress to attack the same sedition bill, he, too, refused to attach himself to the past. He did use historical arguments to prove the royalist implications of the proposed legislation, but his examples were only examples—not pieces of his own experience recast and pressed upon his audience as lessons. The reason is simply that, unlike Madison and Jefferson, he had not reached the stage of his own life where personal experience cried for regeneration. On Callender and the crisis, see Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 336 ff. On Giles, see Dice Robins Anderson, William Branch Giles (Menasha, Wise., 1914), 66–67. How different—protective and proprietary—was the view Giles took of the same events in 1827. By then, the episode was part of a historical lesson which he wished to teach to a younger generation. On the 1827 reminiscence, see Anderson, Giles, 70–71.

17. Ames to William Tudor, July 12, 1789, in Winfred E. A. Bernhard, Fisher Ames: Federalist and Statesman, 1758–1808 (Chapel Hill, 1965), 101.

18. Pickering to Timothy Williams, in Octavius Pickering and Charles W. Upham, The Life of Timothy Pickering, 4 vols. (Boston, 1868–73), 3:181; Fisher Ames, An Oration on . . . General George Washington . . . 8th of February, 1800 (Boston, 1800), 17–18. A recounting of the ideological pronouncements of these party leaders, beginning with their renunciation of parties, is Richard J. Buel, Jr., Securing the Revolution: Ideology in American Politics, 1789–1815 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972).

19. David Humphreys to Washington, March 24, 1793, Frank L. Humphreys, ed., Life and Times of David Humphreys, 2 vols. (New York, 1917), 2: 170–73; Gouverneur Morris to Uriah Tracy, January 5, 1804, Anne C. Morris, ed., Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, 2 vols. (New York, 1888), 2: 451–52; John Marshall, The Life of George Washington, 5 vols. (Richmond, 1804–7), 5: 34, 86–89.

20. [John Fenno], “French Influence,” Gazette of the United States, May 12–27, 1797; Fisher Ames, “Foreign Politics No. 1” (1801), in Seth Ames, ed., The Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (Boston, 1854), 2: 207–8.

21. Morris to Washington, February 14, 1793, Morris, ed., Diary and Letters of Morris, 2: 41; Hamilton to Washington, September 15, 1790, Syrett, ed., Papers of Hamilton, 7: 30, 43; Hamilton to Jefferson, March 1793, Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., Works of Alexander Hamilton, 12 vols. (New York, 1904), 4: 351–75.

22. John Jay to Timothy Pickering, August 17, 1795, in Life of Pickering, 3: 198; Pickering to C. C. Pinckney, September 14, 1796, in Life of Pinckney, 3: 345; John Marshall to Charles Lee, October 25, 1797, Stinchcombe and Cullen, eds., Papers of Marshall, 3: 251.

23. Ames to Rufus King, October 27, 1801, Charles R. King, ed., Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, 4 vols. (New York, 1897), 4: 5.

24. The difference between Whig history and “evangelistic history” was the centrality of the deity in the latter; see Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 387–89, 395–96. In different terms, older, more orthodox Calvinist divines in New England had made the same point about American history’s divergence from other nations’; see Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America (Berkeley, 1966), 25, 116–17, and May, Enlightenment in America, 189–90. Dwight’s contributions to the older Federalist historical corpus are discussed on 52–53 and 95–96.

25. Jedidiah Morse, American Universal Geography (New Haven, 1794), 1: 239–40, 253, 263–68, 291, 384, 432, 442—a wealth of references to history in a book that paid more than lip service to inculcating conservative values in young readers. See also Morse, The Present Situation (Boston, 1795), 14, and Morse, A Sermon . . . May 9th, 1798 (Boston, 1798), 19.

26. John Adams, Discourses on Davila (1790), in Adams, ed., Life and Works of John Adams, 6: 276–77, 273. Both Adams’s comprehension of the French reformers’ purpose and his own ideological consistency in the early 1790s have been questioned. Edward Handler, America and Europe in the Political Thought of John Adams (Cambridge, 1964), chap. 3, argues that Adams misunderstood the French revolt. John R. Howe, Jr., The Changing Political Thought of John Adams (Princeton, 1966), finds Davila a midpoint between Adams’s early fear of aristocracy and his later appreciation of the role of aristocratic symbols. Older scholarship found Adams simply a consistent advocate of mixed government; see Adrienne Koch, ed., Adams and Jefferson: Posterity Must Judge (Chicago, 1963), 49ff. “Adams’s attitude toward the French revolution was strikingly similar to that of Burke,” according to Zoltan Haraszti, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 21, but, unlike Burke, Adams was friendly to the French when they incorporated parts of the Defense into their constitution. Burke’s Reflections was published at the same time as the Davila though both men made their opinion of the French crisis known earlier.

27. Webster to Jefferson, December 12, 1790, in Harry R. Warfel, ed., Letters of Noah Webster (New York, 1953), 88–89; Webster, Address to the Public, July 19, 1796, in Letters of Webster, 138. On Federalist xenophobia, see Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 22–34.

28. David Osgood, A Discourse, Delivered February 19, 1975 . . . (Boston, 1795), 11; David Humphreys, Poem on the Industry of the United States of America (1802), in Miscellaneous Works, 111; Timothy Dwight, Greenfield Hill (1794), in William J. McTaggert and William K. Bottoroff, eds., The Major Poems of Timothy Dwight (Gainesville, Fla., 1969), 385–96.

29. Hamilton, “The Examination No. VIII” (1802), in Syrett, ed., Papers of Hamilton, 25: 496.

30. Ames to George Minot, May 3, 1789, Ames, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, 1: 34. Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution Against Patriarchal Authority, 1750–1800 (Cambridge, Eng., 1982), 198, finds “Washington not only brought the new world to life” for his admirers, but “he sealed it off from corruption, formed its character by the force of his virtuous example, and brought his nation to manhood.” For this, he was not revered as a stern patriarch, but as a gentle, loving father and friend (199–200). One ought to note that this view of Washington was not universally held, for it represented a conception of parenthood congenial to the “friends of order” only. The older Jeffersonians do not appear in Fliegelman’s citations because they had other notions of generativity.

31. Hamilton to Washington, May 19, 1798, Syrett, ed., Papers of Hamilton, 21: 466–68.

32. Gerry to––––, April 13, 1801, quoted in Billias, Gerry, 304.

33. David Ramsay, An Oration, . . . On the Fourth of July, 1794 (Charleston, 1794), 26.

CHAPTER FOUR

1. Retirement in the nineteenth century’s opening decades, especially among active agriculturalists like Jefferson and Madison, did not mean the end of employment. On different notions of retirement, see Kurt W. Back, “The Ambiguity of Retirement,” in Ewald W. Busse and Eric Pfeiffer, eds., Behavior and Adaptation in Late Life (Boston, 1969), 93–114.

2. Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 20, 1808, in John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (San Marino, Ca., 1966), 110; Adams to Cunningham, September 27, 1808, E. M. Cunningham, ed., Correspondence between . . . John Adams and . . . William Cunningham (Boston, 1823), 30; John Marshall to Rufus King, May 5, 1802, King, ed., Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, 4: 118; Benjamin Rush to Adams, August 14, 1805, in Schutz and Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame, 32.

3. Adams to Jefferson, July 9, 1813, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., Writings of Jefferson, 13: 304; Adams to McKean, August 31, 1813, Adams, ed., Life and Works of John Adams, 10: 62; Jefferson to Barlow, April 16, 1811, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., Writings of Jefferson, 13: 44.

4. Hamilton, Letter . . . Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams (October 1800) in Syrett, ed., Papers of Hamilton, 25: 186–88, 193, 224, 229, 233–34; Hamilton, “Examination, No. IX” (1802), Papers, 25: 501.

5. Ames to Oliver Wolcott, March 9, 1803, quoted in Bernhard, Fisher Ames, 338–39; Ames to George Cabot, February 1804, reported by Cabot to Pickering, February 14, 1804, quoted in Bernhard, Fisher Ames, 341; Ames, The Danger of American Liberty (1805), in Ames, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, 2: 345–46.

6. Rush to John Adams, February 19, 1805, Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush, 2: 891; Rush to James McHenry, August 12, 1800, Letters Rush, 2: 819; Rush, to Jefferson, March 15, 1813, Letters of Rush, 2: 1189; Rush, “Travels,” 117; Rush to Adams, November 17, 1812, Letters of Rush, 2: 1166.

7. On the patriotic historical panegyrics of the postwar generation, see Robert P. Hay, “The Glorious Departure of the American Patriarchs: Contemporary Reactions to the Deaths of Jefferson and Adams,” Journal of Southern History, 35 (1969): 543–55, and George H. Callcott, History in the United States, 1800–1860 (Baltimore, 1970).

8. Gouverneur Morris, “Inaugural Address, September 4, 1816,” Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1821 (New York, 1821), 28; John Jay to Morris, October 28, 1816, Johnston, ed., Correspondence of Jay, 4: 394; Jay to McDougall, April 27, 1776, in Morris, John Jay, 263; Jay to Jedediah Morse, February 28, 1797, Correspondence of Jay, 4: 224; Jay to Judge Peters, December 26, 1820, Correspondence of Jay, 4: 436–37.

9. Marshall to Joseph Delaplaine, March 22, 1818, Irwin S. Rhodes, ed., Papers of John Marshall: A Descriptive Calendar, 2 vols. (Norman, Okla., 1969), 2: 135; Marshall to Joseph Story, December 9, 1823, in John E. Oster, ed., The Political and Economic Doctrines of John Marshall (New York, 1914), 120–21; Marshall to Charles Carter, January 29, 1832, Doctrines of Marshall, 48; Marshall to Pickering, March 20, 1826, Doctrines of Marshall, 95. The effect of Marshall’s Federalism on his history is traced in William Smith, History as Argument (The Hague, 1965), 191ff. Contemporary response is recorded in Albert Beveridge, Life of John Marshall, 4 vols. (New York, 1919), 3: 223–73.

10. Rufus King to Christopher Gore, May 8, 1816, quoted in Ernst, King, 350; Rufus King to T. Coleman, July 1818, King, ed., Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, 6: 157–58.

11. Jefferson to William Johnson, March 4, 1823, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., Writings of Jefferson, 15: 420; Jefferson, Introduction [1818], The Complete ‘Anas’ of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Franklin B. Sawvel (1903; New York, 1970), 24–26, 30, 35, 38; Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, November 25, 1823, Richard Beale Davis, ed., Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and Francis Walker Gilmer, 1814–1826 (Columbia, S.C., 1946), 77.

12. Loss of control and consequent soul-searching over the meaning of one’s life is discussed in L. David Levi, Helm Stierlin, and Robert J. Savard, “Fathers and Sons: The Interlocking Crises of Integrity and Identity,” Psychiatry 35 (1972): 48–56.

13. Erikson, Childhood and Society, 268–69; see also Douglas C. Kimmel, Adulthood and Aging: An Interdisciplinary Development View (New York, 1974), 343–90. On Jefferson, see Brodie, Jefferson, 601, and on Madison, Koch, Jefferson and Madison, 286. Richard Sennett explains the public masks eighteenth-century men wore in The Fall of Public Man (New York, 1977), 47–122.

14. John Adams to Jefferson, July 1813, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., Writings of Jefferson, 13: 301; Jefferson to Josephus B. Stuart, May 10, 1817, Writings, 15: 113.

15. Humphreys [June 27, 1813], “On the Necessity of State and Self Defense; Address to the Inhabitants of Connecticut,” in Humphreys, ed., Life and Times of David Humphreys, 2: 394, 396; David Hackett Fischer, Growing Old in America, rev. ed. (New York, 1977), 68; Noah Webster, Letters to a Young Gentleman, Concerning his Education (New Haven, 1823), passim; Webster to Governor John Brooks of Massachusetts, May 1819, Warfel, ed., Letters of Webster, 396–98.

16. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York, 1828), v. My account follows Rollins, Long Journey of Noah Webster, 107–43.

17. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York, 1973), ix, 5, 15, 22. On Pickering’s denial of death, see Clarfield, Pickering, 263.

18. Humphreys, “A Discourse upon Agriculture, New Haven, 1816,” in Humphreys, ed., Life and Times of David Humphreys, 2: 424; Timothy Dwight, Travels in New England and New York [1817], ed. Barbara Miller Solomon (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 1: 185, 2: 323.

19. Timothy Pickering, A Review of the Correspondence between . . . John Adams . . . and the Late William Cunningham (Salem, 1824), 4, 90–91; Pickering, Observations Introductory to the Reading of the Declaration of Independence at Salem July 4th, 1823 (Salem, 1823); Pickering to Marshall, December 26, 1828. Cullen, ed., Papers of Marshall, 2: 302. Pickering’s dying thoughts on history are quoted in Clarfield, Pickering, 269. Despite his anger at Adams’s remarks to Cunningham, Jefferson forgave Adams. Adams was delighted. Both men had been upset at Pickering’s show of animosity. See Malone, Jefferson and His Time, vol. 6: Sage of Monticello (Boston, 1981), 434–35.

20. Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., Writings of Jefferson, 15: 250; Madison, “Advice to My Country” (1836), Hunt, ed., Writings, 9: 610A-B. Madison’s final struggle to deal with sectionalism, slavery, and agricultural self-sufficiency in the Old Dominion are traced in Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (New York, 1971), 623–46.

21. One finds all the denial, anger, and depression of the old revolutionaries in the aged ill today; see Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, “Facing Death,” in John G. Howells, ed., Modern Perspectives in the Psychiatry of Old Age (New York, 1975), 531–40. And today, as then, the study of one’s own history can be therapeutic; Donald J. Dietrich, “Psychohistory,” Historical Method 15 (1982): 88.

22. Brackenridge, Introduction to Collected [Gazette] Essays (1805), in Marder, ed., Brackenridge Reader, 353–54; Brackenridge, Modern Chivalry, 4 [1815]: 803. On Brackenridge’s personal appearance, see Marder, Brackenridge, 60–61.

23. Jefferson, January 6, 1821, Autobiography, 19; Jefferson to Madison, February 27, 1826, Ford, ed., Writings of Jefferson, 10: 378; Jefferson to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., Writings of Jefferson, 16: 181–82.

24. Adams to Jefferson, May 16, 1815, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. Adams’s emotions can be seen in his letter to Mercy Otis Warren, November 24, 1813, in “Warren-Adams Letters, II,” Massachusetts Historical Society Collections 73 (Boston, 1925), 388. Adams was a prolific historical epistletor in his old age; see Howe, The Changing Political Thought of John Adams, 217–52, and Shaw, Character of Adams, 287–94.

25. Rufus King, “Speech to the Senate, March 18, 1824,” in King, ed., Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, 6: 709–10. He knew that was his valedictory address; see Ernst, King, 389.

26. Madison to Drake, January 12, 1835, Hunt, ed., Writings, 9: 546; Madison to ———, March 1836, Writings, 9: 610; see also Ketcham, Madison, 660–64.

27. Marshall to Story, September 30, 1829, Oster, ed., Political and Economic Doctrines of Marshall, 129–30; Marshall to John Marshall, Jr., December 7, 1834, Doctrines of Marshall, 56. And see Leonard Baker, John Marshall: A Life in Law (New York, 1974), 766.

28. Philip Freneau, “A Midnight Storm in the Gulph Stream” (1822), “The Great Western Canal” (1822), “Winter” (1827), in Lewis Leary, ed., The Last Poems of Philip Freneau (New Brunswick, 1945), 86, 21, 123. The note to his son-in-law Freneau jotted on the flyleaf of a collection of his poems (Axelrod, Freneau, 417).

29. Becker, Denial of Death, 260–85.

CONCLUSION

1. Erik Erikson, “Human Strength and the Cycle of Generations,” in Insight and Responsibility (New York, 1964), 122–34.

2. Erikson, “Human Strength and the Cycle of Generations,” 155–56; Erikson, Dimensions of a New Identity, 75–83.

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