Dependency Part Two: Origins

A few words on how I decided to write about the subject of public and private dependency. My research has found me studying a lot of American history, all of it in fact. But second on the list is Medieval European history and finally Ancient Roman history. Hegemonic empires interest me, but the decline of those hegemons and what happens after is what really enflames my passion. What goes wrong with the international order? What waits in the wings to pick up the pieces? What steps do leaders and the population take to try and stem the tide of decline? It may be straying into anthropology and/or sociology to inquire about popular perceptions of social problems, but if there is even a drop of democracy left in this country then what people believe is important in shaping tomorrow's policies. Our perceptions are influenced by so many sources, and only a precious few are helpful or even benign. Malicious influences that twist history to serve special interests should make everyone angry, who enjoys being manipulated anyway?

I first read Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the United States) as an undergrad for oddly enough, a class on the Civil War era. It is huge, it is comprehensive, it is a compelling read. But the first time through I did not make the connection that occurred recently when I listened to Battle Cry on audio. In an early chapter McPherson concisely described what dependency meant to Americans of the early republic. Please forgive that I do not have page numbers or direct quotes, that is just the nature of audiobooks.

When the founders envisioned the American Republic dependency was very much on their minds. Thomas Jefferson may have been the most articulate spokesman for republican virtue, but versions of what that virtue entailed was widely shared by the founders. What went wrong with republics of the past, and how the American experiment could stand the test of time was a chief concern of our early leaders. The Roman republic and its history was well known to educated men of the 18th Century who could read Latin. What sullied republican virtue in Rome to the founders was dependency in the form of patron/client relationships. Slaves to masters, renters to landlords, soldiers to their generals, and so on privatized power in Rome and changed loyalties from the public interest to private interests. Jefferson especially felt that success for America lay in creating and preserving the nation of yeomen family farms, and independent artisans and merchants. Owning land is the key to independence, small self-sufficient farms were free from the coercion that landlords or employers could exert for political influence.

Dependency on others who could and frequently did manipulate their clients to vote against their best interests was worrisome. What about the founders themselves? So many of the founders were slave owning tobacco planters, who were they dependent upon? It is an uncomfortable truth that the unsettled land for yeomen and leisure time for gentlemen was bought with the blood, sweat, and tears of Native Americans and enslaved Africans, but a truth that must be confronted. It is enough here to state that our republic was born from genocide that made land available and slave labor that gave planters leisure sufficient to think and study. In a word though, it was debt that compromised independence among the planter class. In his classic study T. H. Breen examined the mentality of our founders in Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution.

Hmm, debt and working for someone else are bad for a healthy republic. Is a republic of laws and not men still our goal? Can the majority of Americans just struggling to maintain stability and the necessities of life find enough energy and will to reverse our decline? Is there any hope of reversing the oligarchic and authoritarian trends in our corporate republic? If anyone reading this has comments, questions, corrections, or other criticism I welcome it.