Arguments over what democracy actually meant in practice and how it
should be implemented raged throughout the early American republic.
As Andrew Shankman shows, nowhere were those ideas more intensely
contested or more representative of the national debate than in
Pennsylvania, where the state's Jeffersonians dominated the day.
Pennsylvania Jeffersonians were the first American citizens to
attempt to translate idealized speculations about democracy into a
workable system of politics and governance. In doing so, they
revealed key assumptions that united other national citizens
regarding democracy and the conditions necessary for its survival.
In particular, they assumed that democracy required economic
autonomy and a strong measure of economic as well as political
equality among citizens. This strong egalitarian theme was,
however, challenged by Pennsylvania's precociously capitalistic
economy and the nation's dynamic economic development in general,
forcing the Jeffersonians to confront the reality that economic and
social equality would have to take a back seat to free market
forces.
Seeking democracy became a debate about the desirability of
capitalism and the precise relations between majority rule and the
pursuit and protection of individual rights and interests. From
this struggle to fuse egalitarianism and free enterprise in
Pennsylvania emerged most subsequent mainstream beliefs concerning
the respective roles of democracy and capitalism in American
society. In fact, it did much to shape the boundaries of
permissible thought in the Jacksonian era concerning political
economy and the extent of popular democratic power.
Shankman's illuminating exploration of the Pennsylvania
experience reveals how democracy arose in America, how it came to
accommodate capitalism, and at the same time forced egalitarian
assumptions and dreams to the margins of society. A resonant work
of intellectual and political history, his study also mirrors the
aspirations, fears, hatreds, dreams, generous impulses, noble
strivings, selfish cant, and enormous capacity to imagine of those
who first tried to translate the blueprint for democracy into a
tested foundation for the nation's future.
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