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John Taylor of Caroline: Pastoral Republican

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John Taylor of Caroline is largely unknown these days yet in the 1780s thru the 1820s he was one of our most influential political theorists and commentators on the Constitution.
His contributions to the pamphlet wars of the 1790s helped clarify the differences between the emerging Jeffersonian opposition and the positions of Hamilton, Adams and other Federalists. Later, starting with the publication of Arator and continuing through to his New Views on the Constitution, John Taylor developed a powerful variant of the so-called South Atlantic Republicanism. Taylor's philosophy (a powerful mix of state's rights, an emphasis on the rights of the {white} individual, Adam Smith's economic theories, veneration of farming and a fear of the "monied" interests) was influential for decades. It is difficult to read deeply in the history of the early republic without having to deal with Taylor's ideas and influence. In particular, I would think it very difficult to understand or appreciate antebellum Southern culture without an understanding of Taylor.
But, I am going to assert, there is a darn good reason that his philosophy has been largely forgotten by all but the most fervid state's right advocate. Simply put, Taylor's particular form of republicanism is based on his ideas about the agrarian life and that is based on his views on slavery. More on that later.
The book under review by Robert Shalhope is a form of intellectual biography. Shalhope is a great and influential historian (it is impossible to read contemporary academic history of the period and not see his name cited). Shalhope assumes that the reader is largely familiar with the great public events of Taylor's time and makes little effort to relate those events (if you need the background reading try Miller's The Federalist Era and Smelser's The Democratic Republic for solid, short intros). Shalhope gives the broad outlines of Taylor's life- enough to see that on the personal level he was a sympathetic and very upright man (given his own morality). Mostly Shalhope is interested in exploring how the structure of Virginia life impacted Taylor's thought and vice versa.
Along the way, he gives excellent summaries of all of Taylor's writings.
Shalhope sees those writings as having a thematic arc that takes Taylor's thought from a form of "Revolutionary republicanism, once held in common with the larger national community, to a sectional ideology" (p.9).
The earlier phase of Taylor's thought is explicated in his "An Enquiry into the Principles and Tendency of Certain Public Measures". Taylor claimed that the following six principles were fundamental:
1. The Constitution established a republican form of government.
2. Congress has the power to tax only for the public good-not for the
good of private persons.
3. The ultimate legitimacy of any legislation is derived from the people...
4. which was regularly delegated by elections to representatives.
5. A representative was legit only as long as he was impelled by the common good.
6. Whenever any of the above was not true, the government had been usurped
and was no longer legitimate. (p.76)
The body of the pamphlet is spent explaining how these principles are imperiled by the Bank of the United States. Taylor seems to have been incapable, according to Shalhope, of seeing a bank as being anything but a fraudulent device to transfer money from those who actually earn it (the farmer, the mechanic) to those who don't (the "monied" interest, the stockjobber, the speculator, etc..).
One could make the case that the rest of Taylor's writings were simply improvements on the themes of the 1790's pamphlets. But Shalhope sees a second phase of Taylor's ideas beginning to emerge with the publication of the Arator essays in 1810. These newspaper essays presented not only Taylor's extensive knowledge of agriculture (he was a very successful and innovative farmer) but also his ideas on an ideal society (p.127).
Taylor believed that there was a "common interest" that it was the duty of government to represent. This common or "natural" interest was based on the ownership of land. Land made fruitful by the work of the agricultural and laboring classes. This is true wealth and, by creating it, there was a natural fostering in those classes of necessary republican virtues. Natural labor led to lives of simplicity, honesty, frugality and temperance. It created men who were self-sufficient, beholden to no one yet who cared for their neighbors and their country. The representative of the country must be faithful to this interest and encourage it above all "artificial" interests if the young American nation was to survive as a bastion of freedom. Artificial interests were those of the stock-jobber, those of the paper money men and those who wanted a constant national debt. If the representatives were corrupted into the service of artificial interests, then we had become a nation of slaves. Thus the Arator essays were designed to bring about a renaissance of agriculture and thus of true republicanism (p.136).
Many of the reforms that Taylor was to suggest in these and later writings were designed to maintain the health of this natural agrarian political economic foundation. His writings are full of intelligent warnings about not mistaking the ability to vote with freedom, about the political machinations of the wealthy capitalist (he actually used this word in some of his later writings {p.187}) and various constitutional changes that could help to foster the political position of the farmer.
But there is always the presence of slavery. By the time of the Arator essays, Taylor owned 145 slaves (p.110). Since the essays are written for the Southern farming elite, they are full of suggestions on how to get the most out of your "animal labour", i.e., your slave. This gets to the crux of what I find so odd about Taylor and, for that matter, Jefferson and Madison and all the others. They wax poetic about the republican nature of
farm labor but they weren't the ones doing the real labor. They merely oversaw. These weren't small family farms. Many of the founders (like Taylor) were solicitous of their slaves but only as long as displayed "complete submission" (p.142). They were terrified of being subjected to the schemes of the money men but they had no problem wielding a far more terrible power over their slaves. Yeah, they were conflicted but so what? A conflicted tyrant is still a tyrant. And ask yourself this- would our culture be so understanding of their conflicts if their slaves had been white?
And so in the end, I am left with a great book about one of our great men who was terribly wrong about the centerpiece of his political theories. You can read Taylor for insights into Southern culture at the time or for insights into the early constitutional debates. You simply cannot read him for a usable political theory. His time is past to which I say (and I am an atheist), "Praise God". You are better off just reading
Shalhope.