What a fantastic book. The parts about how the ruling elite passed legislation with the direct purpose of creating a rift between poor whites and black slaves and free blacks because they feared a servile insurrection would topple their extortionist state was depressing.
I thought his discussion on the interaction between the views of the poor in England and America, the Commonwealth Men thought, the eventual alliance of small white landholders and large landholders, and the seemingly contradictory relationship between American slavery and American freedom was absolutely fascinating. It really explains so much.
To them, it was not contradictory. They saw the poor as threats to liberty because they were dependents. They could always be bribed, bought and used to threaten the liberty of others. Only through land could a person remain independent. Consequently, the biggest proponents of republicanism were amongst the most ardent supporters of enslaving, dispersing, or in some way neutralizing the poor. Raising up the poor to become independent did not occur to them because there simply was not enough land in England to make them independent.
VA 'solved' this issue by enslaving a portion of its poor, blacks. Eventually, through reduced competition, the ruling elites not having to ruthlessly exploit them, and greater political power, the poor whites became less poor and more and more became small landowners. This made them independent and people who could partake in liberty, freedom and equality. The dependents, the slaves, were controlled by their masters and thus could not threaten liberty nearly as well as the free poor because they were under control and had no hope.
What also SP and LP was republican ideology advocated by those haters of the poor, the Commonwealth men. It was, interestingly, a leveling ideology, and an ideology that opposed arbitrary monarchical power and any nefarious influence on it. In fact, it was VA that imbibbed these views the most, and English diplomats remarked that VA was the area of the nation where social distinction mattered least and that leveling thought was most prominent. New England, there was more issues of social distinction and defference.
I always wondered why Virginia and the South became the party that were ones who charged the federalists of monarchism, aristocraticsm, etc, and were the ones who were really the impetus for expanding democracy and taking on very plain, simple republic airs when they were slave-holding aristocrats. I think this definitely helps explain it
In America then, the language that used to describe all poor in England and America, white and black, started to only become associated with blacks, and was conceived to be a particular characteristic of blacks. Full blown societal racism is born.
This also helped me better understand Jefferson's opposition to debt and manufacturing. He was opposed to it because both created dependency, and thus created people who were threats to liberty and equality. I find it kind of funny then that basically every VA planter was mired in debt. So yea, he didnt oppose Hamilton because of some naive idealistic traditionalism, he opposed it because he thought it was a grave threat to the liberty that was just won in the Revolutionary War.
I really want to read The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution now. I know that book goes into much greater detail about the influence of the Commonwealth men on our founders, which was absolutely fascinating here, so I am interested to see it giving a much fuller treatment.
It is also rather depressing that a lot of the anti-poor rhetoric hasnt disappeared
