Robert Shalhope in his John Taylor of Caroline:Pastoral Republican talks about the tendency of historians to assert a "single and substantial 'reality' in the period they are studying and then judging individuals...by this standard" (Shalhope, p.8) He might well have added that as readers we tend to do the same thing. Mr. Murphy's review below is a good example of this. For some reason, many people want to beatify certain individuals and trends in our early history and then judge histories of that period by how well they cleave to that reader's historical construction. The best example of this is the way that readers or historians react to Alexander Hamilton.
The problem with this tendency is that it distorts our reading of the history of that period. Here is a thought. I suggest that few people would be arrogant enough to claim that they had a standard by which the present could be judged. There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophies and so on. Well here is the Taylor axiom: "If it doesn't work for the present, it doesn't work for the past".
This is only to claim that we need to start seeing our past as not one reality but many different realities that were experienced by many different types of people. People who were liberal, radical, conservative, Whigs, rational and religious all at the same time. Otherwise, we cheapen them in the name of our pet ideas.
A case in point. Banning's book while strongly influenced by Pocock's work can be equally said to be as strongly influenced by Bailyn, Wood, Maier,Cunningham, Peterson, Foner and Ketcham. To claim that Banning is just channeling Pocock is to not see Banning through your ideological forest.
Furthermore to claim, that anyone who "really" knows his Jefferson will see through Banning's argument is a subtle ad hominem. I would appreciate actual quotes or some sort of evidence to back up such a claim. In any case, I am evidently not as knowledgeable as Mr. Murphy in that I am impressed by what Prof. Banning has to offer us.
Banning's thesis is that the Real Whig (or the "country" ideology) was initially useful to the Revolutionary situation because it helped them to conceptualize and justify their opposition to British policy as a unwilling protest against the corruption of the British regime.
But later these same arguments became useful to the rising opposition to the Hamiltonian economic program. The arguments proved even more useful in delineating different apporachs to foreigh affairs and central to the fight against the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Part of the reason the Country ideology fit the Jeffersonian's purposes so well is that their political situation was analogous to that of the Country party. Like Bolinbroke in his struggle with Walpole, John Taylor read the rising opposition not as the beginnings of a "party" (a dirty work for at least another 30 years) but as the reaction of "patriots" who were fighting against degeneracy and ministerial influence peddling (Banning, p. 200). Furthermore the Jeffersonians were initially a minority in Congress. "By nature, criticisim of corruption was a weapon of minorities, who...claim that influence had perverted the expression of the people's will in order to claim that they spoke for the majority" (Banning, p.74).
Overall, I find Banning's argument for the influence of the Country ideology on the Jeffersonians to be very persuasive.
Are his arguments flawless? Heck, no. On pp. 138-9, Banning makes an argument that Hamilton "may" have been influenced by a reading of Hume and certain "Court" replies to the Country arguments. By the next page, that "may have been" has become a definite influence. I like to call this particular fault "arguing from wishful evidence". But apart from a few faux pas like that, Banning comes across as learned and judicious.
This book is well worth the early American history reader's time to explore. And it should also be noted that Banning has published a companion volumn called Liberty and Order which contains many of the original writings that he refers to throughout his book. This brings me to one point in which I am probably in complete agreement with Mr. Murphy. As good as it is to read about these wacky guys and gals, it is even better to read their own writings. It's our history, people. We should own it.
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