From Republicanism to Liberalism

Ideological Change and the Crisis of the Old South

Bibliographic Data

ID2730293
AuthorsJeannie Oakes (0000-0003-2954-8865, corresponding author), James Oakes
Year1985
Volume37
Issue4
Pages551
Publication date1985-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2712581
OpenAlexW2326209116
LanguageEN
Citations received6

DISGUSTED BY THE VENALITY AND CORRUPTION HE FOUND PERVASIVE IN THE federal government, Congressman Abraham W. Venable of North Carolina rose to the floor of the House of Representatives in early 1852 and delivered a speech infused with ancient republican rhetoric. As he progressed, the congressman strayed further and further from his particular subject-government printing contracts-until he reached the underlying principles compelled his dismay. With a ringing invocation of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, Venable launched his final assault. We must return to simple unsophisticated republicanism of the pure and palmy days of our country, he declared, a distribution of fifty millions of our money, and whole empires of land gave the means of temptation and corruption, and placed in the hands of Congress the control of jobs by which opulence may be acquired in a few months a year. Moments later, Venable was abruptly called to order by the Honorable William H. Polk of Tennessee, who declared he simply did not know what Venable was talking about. He is laying about so loose, Polk asserted, that I cannot see what he is at myself.' With the chamber broke out into laughter. When quiet was restored, John W. Howe, also of North Carolina, threw the House into another fit of mirth by asking, with deliberate exasperation, whether Venable was for or against the bill under consideration. I The ridicule to which Abraham Venable was subjected conforms to a pattern is now being uncovered by historians of American republicanism. In its barest outlines, the pattern reveals a substantial ideological divide spanning the decades before and after 1800, a divide closely associated with the development of American capitalism and therefore most intense during the nineteenth

Economic history · Economics · Ideology · Liberalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies · Religious Studies

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub