Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
he looked forward hopefully to a new political order, created by the
popular mind. It came more quickly than he had expected, once the old
inhibitions were removed. “New Govts are now erecting in the several
American states under the Authority of the People,” he wrote soon after
Independence. “Monarchy seems to be generally exploded. And it is not
a little surprising to me that the Aristocratick Spirit, which appeard
to have taken deep Root in some of them, now gives place to that of
Democracy.”[282]
During the difficult after-years of reconstruction Adams remained
true to his democratic principles. As he had earlier resisted the
encroachments of monarchical centralization, he later fought against
Federalistic consolidation. He distrusted the Constitution as an
undemocratic instrument, fearing a centralized authority removed from
immediate control; and he joined heartily in the work of securing a
Bill of Rights. He welcomed the French Revolution and followed closely
the developing democratic philosophy which that great upheaval did so
much to clarify and disseminate. He remained an unrepentant Jacobin
during those acrimonious years when the Federalists were filling the
air with their anti-Jacobin fustian. He had heard gentlemen rant
before and was probably amused when, as Governor, he attended Harvard
Commencement and listened to young Robert Treat Paine fulminate against
the red atheism of France and its American spawn. Although a kinsman of
John Adams and warm friend, he welcomed the election of Jefferson as a
return to democratic principles after an unhappy period of “prejudice
and passion,” although he warned him, “you must depend upon being
hated ... because they hate your principles.” The last letter in the
collected edition of his works, addressed to his old friend Tom Paine,
November 30, 1802, is an appeal for democratic unity; and the words
with which it concludes--_felix qui cautus_--embody the principle of
his amazing political strategy. In playing for great stakes it is well
to be wary.
His anti-Federalism, aggravated by his frank advocacy of Jacobin
principles, cost him heavily in after days, and like Philip Freneau his
just fame was long obscured by partisan spleen. Although he retained
his hold on the affections of the Massachusetts electorate, and was
annually chosen Governor until the infirmities of age determined his
withdrawal from public affairs, he was silently dropped from the roll
of American patriots whose deeds were celebrated in current panegyrics.
His manuscripts were scattered after his death, and he was in the way
of being forgotten till Bancroft, in the next century, gave fresh
currency to his earlier reputation. Since then the figure of Samuel
Adams has grown steadily larger, although he still awaits a biographer
who will set him in his due place in the history of American liberalism.
Footnotes
[261] _Works_, Vol. II, p. 269.
[262] _Works_, Vol. I, p. 348.
[263] Hutchinson seems to justify such a view from a passage written in
1770: “The leaders here seem to acknowledge that their cause is not to
be defended on constitutional principles, and Adams now gives out that
there is no need of it; they are upon better ground; all men have a
natural right to change a bad constitution for a better, whenever they
have it in their power.” (Hosmer, _Life of Samuel Adams_, p. 259.)
[264] _Works_, Vol. I, p. 135.
[265] _Works_, Vol. II, p. 299.
[266] “The Rights of the Colonists,” in _Works_, Vol. II, pp. 355-356.
[267] “Candidus,” in _Works_, Vol. II, pp. 325-326.
[268] _Works_, Vol. I, p. 28.
[269] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 29.
[270] “A Chatterer,” in _Works_, Vol. II, pp. 45-46.
[271] _Works_, Vol. III, p. 289.
[272] _History of Massachusetts Bay_, Vol. III, p. 349.
[273] See in particular the “Candidus” articles in _Works_, Vol. II, in
which he elaborated his views on government by ministerial instructions.
[274] See “Puritan” articles, in _Works_, Vol. I, p. 201 _et seq._
[275] See “Candidus,” in Vol. II, p. 246; “Chatterer,” in Vol. II, pp.
35, 39, 43; “Layman,” in Vol. I, p. 322.
[276] _Works_, Vol. II., p. 436.
[277] _Works_, Vol. I, p. 80.
[278] _Works_, Vol. II, pp. 22, 26.
[279] _Works_, Vol. II, p. 150.
[280] _Works_, Vol. III, p. 244.
[281] _Ibid._, Vol. II, p. 39.
[282] _Ibid._, Vol. III, p. 305.
Chapter V • Literary Echoes
The Revolutionary upheaval produced no polite literature in any
respects comparable to its utilitarian prose. The expiring wit
literature of England was an exotic that refused to be naturalized, and
the times were unpropitious for the creation of a native poetry. An
occasional dilettante like Mather Byles aspired to be a wit, but the
reputation of the clever Bostonian owed more to his tongue than to his
pen, and he is dimly remembered for the letter that he received from
the great Mr. Pope, rather than for notable verse. Nevertheless in the
early seventies pure literature was beginning to make a perceptible
stir in New England. Clever young men in the colleges were turning
moderns and making ready to wage a new battle of the books. They
preferred the refinements of verse to the didacticism of sermons; they
were discovering the charm of playful satire; and they found in the
currently fashionable tetrameter a brisk vehicle for their attacks on
academic dullness. They admired Churchill, then at the height of his
brief fame, but they were restrained by a decent modesty and dared
not go his length in brutal frankness. It was from these young men,
amateurs in verse writing and amateurs likewise in politics, that the
American cause mainly recruited its literary defenders. They might be
flaming Whigs but they were also well-bred young gentlemen who studied
the amenities and sought to unite patriotism with good form.
I • The Whig Satirists
1. John Trumbull
There was the best of Yankee blood in the veins of John Trumbull.
Among his kinsmen were the Reverend Benjamin Trumbull, historian
of Connecticut, Governor Jonathan Trumbull--Washington’s “Brother
Jonathan”--and John Trumbull the painter. On his mother’s side he was
descended from the vigorous Solomon Stoddard, grandfather of Jonathan
Edwards. His father was a scholarly minister, long a trustee of Yale
College, at which school the son spent seven years as undergraduate and
tutor. He was a precocious youth with a strong love of polite letters,
and a praiseworthy desire to achieve literary distinction. Greek and
Latin had been the toys of his childhood and when he was seven years of
age he passed the entrance examination to college. During the period
of his tutorship he joined with Timothy Dwight and Joseph Howe in
the work of overhauling the stale curriculum, supplementing Lilly’s
Grammar and Calvin’s Institutes with Pope and Churchill. Like other
aspiring youths of the day he dabbled in Spectator papers, practiced
his couplets, and eventually produced _The Progress of Dulness_, the
cleverest bit of academic verse till then produced in America. At heart
Trumbull was thoroughly academic, and nothing would have suited his
temperament better than the life of a Yale professor; but the prospects
proving unfavorable, he began to mingle Blackstone with the poets in
preparation for his future profession.
He was thus engaged during the middle years of the long dispute with
England, the bitter wranglings of which seem to have disturbed him
little in his quiet retreat. But in 1773 he resigned his tutorship
to prepare himself further in the law. Removing to Boston he entered
the office of John Adams, then rising to prominence as a spokesman
of the popular party; and he took lodgings in the house of Caleb
Cushing, Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly. Placed thus at the
storm center of provincial politics, he was soon infected with the
Whig dissatisfactions and joined himself to the patriotic party. When
Adams went to Philadelphia to sit in the Continental Congress, Trumbull
withdrew to Hartford, where he established himself. Before quitting
Boston he had published an _Elegy on the Times_, a political tract that
seemed to Adams so useful to the cause that he marked the young poet
for future service, and the year following he encouraged the writing
of _M’Fingal_, the first part of which appeared in 1775. So great was
the prestige it met with that Trumbull tinkered with it for seven
years, publishing it finally in its completed form in 1782. The law
seems to have been a jealous mistress then as now, and his dreams of
further literary work were inadequately realized. He is believed to
have had a hand in _The Anarchiad_, and he wrote some minor poems; but
he soon drifted into politics, went on the bench, finally removed to
Detroit in 1825, and died there in 1831, at the age of eighty-one. He
had outlived his Revolutionary generation, long outlived his literary
ambitions, and was pretty much forgotten before he died. His collected
works, published in 1820, proved a losing venture for the printer.
America in 1820 was turning romantic, and few, it seems, cared to
invest in two volumes of echoes.
Trumbull’s reputation rests exclusively on _M’Fingal_. It was so
popular in its time that more than thirty pirated editions were
issued. It was broadcasted by “news-papers, hawkers, pedlars, and
petty chapmen,” and it served its partisan purpose. The author was
complimented by the Marquis de Chastellux on fulfilling all the
conditions of burlesque poetry as approved since the days of Homer;
but in spite of the indisputable cleverness of some of the lines,
it is not a great work. In its final form it is spun out to extreme
length, and pretty much swamped by the elaborate machinery on which the
poet visibly prided himself. Even in the thick of attack Trumbull did
not forget his academic reading, but he explains his allusions with
meticulous care. He seems, indeed, rather more concerned about the laws
of the mock epic than the threatened rights of America. The Scotch Tory
hero is a figure so unlike the real Tory--the Olivers and Leonards and
Hutchinsons, with their love of power and dignified display--that the
caricature loses much in historical veracity. Trumbull’s patriotism
was well bred and unmarked by fierce partisanship. His refined tastes
were an ill equipment for the turmoil of revolution. The ways of the
radical were not lovely in his eyes; the Sons of Liberty with their
tar-pots and feather-beds were too often rough fellows, and although
they provided him with comic material to set off the blunderings of
the Squire, they probably seemed to him little better than tools of
demagogues. Very often this tousle-headed democracy behaved like a mob,
and Trumbull in his tie-wig did not approve of mobs.
The more thoughtfully one reads _M’Fingal_, throwing upon it the light
of the total career of its author, the more clearly one perceives
that John Trumbull was not a rebellious soul. In the year 1773, while
projecting some fresh ventures in the Spectator vein, “he congratulated
himself on the fact ‘that the ferment of politics’ was, as he supposed,
‘pretty much subsided,’ and that at last the country was to enjoy a
‘mild interval from the struggles of patriotism and self-interest,
from noise and confusion, Wilkes and liberty.’” He had then no wish for
embroilment in civil war, no dreams of political independence. All his
life he seems to have suffered from ill health, which probably sapped
his militancy and lessened his pugnacity. From this temperamental
calmness came a certain detachment that allowed his partisanship to
remain cooler than the hot passions of the times commonly suffered. He
could permit himself the luxury of a laugh at the current absurdities;
and it is this light-heartedness that made _M’Fingal_ so immediately