Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
end of his writings was to raise the standard of democracy, and
to elevate “the noble of nature” to the same level with any
other noble, in those qualities which constitute true nobility.
The noble of nature, in his opinion, ought not to yield to the
noble of aristocracy or monarchy, in strict integrity, in liberal
and benevolent feelings, in propriety of manners and general
intelligence.
The work is a string of adventures, interspersed with miscellaneous
discussion, of Captain John Farrago--who is evidently Brackenridge
himself--and his bog-trotting servant Teague O’Regan. The Captain
is an intelligent person, well read in the literature of the times,
and “a good deal disposed to subscribe to the elementary principles”
of Paine’s _Rights of Man_. He can summarize neatly the arguments
on both sides of the political questions of the day, but he retains
the open mind and cautious judgment of the independent. He is
a free-lance critic, democratic in sympathies but unsparing in
exposure of absurdity. His hits fall right and left, on the country
yokel, the city speculator, members of Congress, the institution of
slavery. He is greatly concerned to preserve his servant from the
temptations of ambition which assail him in the backwoods as well as
in Philadelphia. The career of Teague O’Regan is a broad satire on
the mounting ambition of old-world peasants to push their way up.
That the underling should rise in a democratic country was well; but
that he should be in unseemly haste to scramble into positions beyond
his capacities, that in pushing his private fortunes he should bring
ridicule upon the democratic experiment, was not well. Teague O’Regan’s
desire to scramble discovered quite too fertile a field for his own
or the country’s good. He is nearly sent to Congress by a backwoods
constituency, listens to other seductive appeals, and in the end is
sent by President Washington to the West as a revenue officer, where
he falls into the untender hands of the whisky rioters, and finds his
Irish beauty marred by a coat of tar and feathers.
It is in his burlesque of electorate methods that Brackenridge hits
most sharply at the current tendencies of republicanism. The ways of
the backwoods he caricatures by describing a contest between an honest
deacon and an ignorant Scotch-Irishman, which he came upon in his
peregrinations.
When they looked upon the one, they felt an inclination to promote
him. But when, again, on the other hand, they saw two kegs which
they knew to be replenished with a very cheering liquor, they
seemed to be inclined in favor of the other. The candidates were
called upon to address the people, and the grave person mounted
the stump of a tree, many of them standing round, as the place was
a new clearing. His harangue was listened to by some of the older
and more sedate, and one man, hard of hearing, seemed to make great
effort to catch the sounds. As soon as the man of the two kegs took
a stump, he was surrounded by an eager crowd.--“Frinds,” said he,
in the native Scotch-Irish, “I’m a good dimicrat, and hates the
Brattish--I’m an elder of the meetin’, forby, and has been overseer
of the roads for three years:--An’ ye all know, that my mammy was
kilt o’ the Ingens--now all ye that’s in my favor, come forit an’
drenk.” Appetite, or rather thirst, prevailed, and the voters gave
their votes to the man with the two kegs.[395]
If whisky decided elections in the backcountry, business controlled
them in the city. The following is almost modern in its caricature:
The candidates were all remarkably pot-bellied; and waddled in
their gait. The captain inquiring what were the pretensions of
these men to be elected; he was told, that they had all stock
in the funds, and lived in brick buildings; and some of them
entertained fifty people at a time, and ate and drank abundantly;
and living an easy life, and pampering their appetites, they had
swollen to this size.
“It is a strange thing,” said the captain, “that in the
country, in my route, they would elect no one but a weaver or a
whisky-distiller; and here none but fat squabs, that guzzle wine,
and smoke segars.”... “No, faith” (said his friend), “there is na
danger of Teague here, unless he had his scores o’ shares in the
bank, and was in league with the brokers, and had a brick house at
his hurdies, or a ship or twa on the stocks ... all is now lost in
substantial interest, and the funds command everything.”[396]
That there might be no mistake as to the meaning of his satire
Brackenridge set down at the end an explicit statement of his purpose.
As already hinted by some things put into the mouth of the
captain, I could make it a principal matter to form the heart of
_a republican government_. And in order to this, keep out all
that nourishes _ambition_, the poison of public virtue.... In the
American republics, we retain yet a great deal of the spirit of
monarchy. The people are not aware of the phraseology itself, in
some instances.... The first lesson I would give to a son of mine
would be to have nothing to do with public business, but as a duty
to his country. To consider service in civil life, no more to be
desired than service in the military.... Those who say to them,
_vox populi vox dei_, offer up an incense to flattery, as impious
as the worshippers of the Caesars. They should be warned to beware
of flatterers, whose object is not to serve them, but themselves.
The demagogue in a democracy, and the courtier in a monarchy, are
identical. They are the same, plying the same arts in different
situations.... I shall have accomplished something by this book, if
it shall keep some honest man from lessening his respectability by
pushing himself into public trusts for which he is not qualified;
or when pushed into public station, if it shall contribute to keep
him honest by teaching him the folly of ambition, and farther
advancement.... This is in great part, the moral of this book; if
it should be at all necessary to give a hint of it.
One may do a worse service to democracy than to point out its faults.
Brackenridge was no truckler either to King George or to his neighbors.
Living in the midst of a coonskin democracy, he refused to believe
that there was any particular virtue in coonskin. It is not the cap
but what is under it that signifies. He was a vigorous individualist,
a confirmed democrat, a friend of all honest liberalisms, a man who
honored his own counsels and went his own way. We could better spare
more pretentious books from the library of our early literature than
these clever satires that preserve for us some of the homely ways of a
time when American institutions were still in the making.
Footnotes
[374] Quoted by Samuel Eliot Morison in _Harrison Gray Otis_, Vol. I,
p. 107.
[375] _Travels_, Vol. II, p. 458.
[376] Number III.
[377] Number X.
[378] Number XI.
[379] Number IX.
[380] _Literary History of America_, p. 300.
[381] _Literary History of the American Revolution_, Vol. I, p. 172.
[382] _Poems_, Pattee edition, Vol. I, p. 141.
[383] _The American Soldier._
[384] _To Duncan Doolittle._
[385] _On False Systems of Government._
[386] _Letters on Various Interesting and Important Subjects, etc._,
by Robert Slender, 1799; quoted by Pattee, Introduction to _Poems of
Philip Freneau_.
[387] See A. M. Schlesinger, _The Colonial Merchants and the American
Revolution_, Chapter IV.
[388] Forman, “The Political Activities of Philip Freneau,” in _Johns
Hopkins Studies in History and Political Science_, Vol. XX.
[389] _The Brook of the Valley._
[390] Purcell, _Connecticut in Transition_, p. 27.
[391] _Advice to the Privileged Orders_, pp. 66, 70.
[392] _Book VIII._
[393] Cairns, _History of American Literature_, p. 147.
[394] _Modern Chivalry_, edition of 1846, p. 170.
[395] _Ibid._, p. 105.
[396] _Ibid._, pp. 127-128.
Conclusion
With the triumph of Jefferson in the great struggle of 1800, the first
democratic battle had been won at the polls, but victory remained still
in doubt. The new liberalism was in the saddle, but how long it would
keep its seat, or whither it would drive, no one could foresee. The
aristocratic eighteenth century was still in secure possession of all
the vantage points of polite culture. It still held the positions of
honor and emolument and dictated the ways of society. The tie-wig and
smallclothes had not yet been put to rout by homespun and coonskin, and
were laying plans to make good the first defeat. Polite letters were
still content with the old wit ideal, still enamored of the couplet,
still in love with caustic satire, still transfixing democracy with its
sharp quills. The nineteenth century with its cargo of romanticisms had
not yet crossed the Atlantic, and while Napoleon was strewing Europe
with the wrecks of old empires, America was still dwelling in the
twilight of a century that was loath to be gone.
The account in the American ledger was complex and not easily cast up,
yet Jefferson might well have regarded with satisfaction the results
of two hundred years of new-world experience. The drift was all in
the direction he was facing. The age of theology was gone, the age of
political speculation was passing, the age of constitution building
was over. Disintegration had come upon every system of caste brought
hither from the old world; the free economics of a decentralized
society had proved a sufficient solvent to destroy the principle
of monarchy and of aristocracy, and prepare the American mind for
a venture in republicanism. Overseas liberalisms had flourished in
the soil that proved inhospitable to overseas conservatisms; and it
was these European liberalisms that provided the mold into which ran
the fluid experience of America to assume substantial form. That
the venture in republicanism would inure to the benefit of agrarian
America--to the producers on their scattered farms--Jefferson seems
never to have doubted; and the ready naturalization of the philosophy
of equalitarianism in the backwoods settlements might well have seemed
to justify his hopes. Nevertheless new forces were preparing that
were to bring about momentous changes in nineteenth-century America.
Capitalism with its banks and credit and elastic currency and its
psychology of speculation, and industrialism with its technique of
factory production, were already at work preparing a different pattern
of life for America, a pattern wholly unlike that of the simpler
agrarianism with its domestic economy, which Jefferson represented. A
new romanticism of the middle class was eventually to shoulder aside
the aspirations of gentleman and farmer alike, and refashion America
after its own ideal. What was implied in that momentous change provides
the theme for another study, and cannot be entered upon here.
Bibliography
Only the more important titles dealt with in the present study are
listed hereunder, together with selected biographical and critical
material. The invaluable bibliographies in the _Cambridge History of
American Literature_, four vols., New York, 1917-22, cover most of the
writers considered, and the reader is referred to them for detailed
material.
Book I: Part I
I. English Backgrounds: For the broader European movements, see
Preserved Smith, _The Age of the Reformation_ (New York, 1920). For
English movements, see David Masson, _Life of Milton_ (6 vols.,
London, 1859-80). The important ideas of Luther will be found in _An
Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning
the Reform of the Christian State_ (1520); _The Babylonian Captivity