America 753
of slaves for liberty, having nothing to do with American politics, was not even to
be dignified by the epithet of Jacobinism.
Which Way the New Republic?
There has been a recent trend toward seeing the problems of the United States in
the 1790’s as those of a “new nation,” of the same general kind as the “new nations”
of the twentieth century.^11 In many ways the parallel does not hold. Though the
first people to break away from a European colonial empire, the Americans had
never lived under colonialism in its more recent sense. They themselves, most of
them, were transplanted Europeans by racial stock, and their only culture was that
of Europe, however modified or diluted. Some of the more difficult problems of
adjustment to Western Civilization, as faced by new nations of the twentieth cen-
tury, therefore did not exist in the United States. In addition, the Americans had
enjoyed a good deal of self- rule in the old British empire; and, except at the ex-
tremes, among the upper classes and among the slaves, the level of wealth was
higher than among corresponding classes in Europe. The Americans in colonial
times had not suffered from exploitation, and in their first years of independence
they did not suffer from poverty. Only in some respects was the country a “new
nation” at all; it had announced some new ideas that had proved exciting in Eu-
rope, and it was already modern in its lack of feudal, dynastic, and churchly attach-
ments; but in some ways it was actually old- fashioned, having shared less than
Europe in the scientific, literary, capitalistic, governmental, and bureaucratic devel-
opment of the preceding two hundred years. American English, with its neolo-
gisms and it archaisms, was characteristic of the state of society.
Nevertheless, the United States faced some typical problems of a new nation. It
had to create a viable government, avoid domination by foreign powers, and pre-
vent its territory from falling to pieces. It had to follow up its revolution by devel-
oping a new principle of legitimacy or authority. The leadership had somehow to
enlist the interest of the whole people in a new enterprise, and build up their loy-
alty to a new regime. It was necessary also to develop roads, communications, pub-
lic opinion, and group spirit or national identity. There was the general problem of
economic development, and hence of access to foreign capital and the technical
skills of older and more civilized countries; or, at least, decisions had to be made on
whether or not such development was desirable.
It happened also, as for new nations in the twentieth century, that the United
States found itself in a world agitated by revolution, with all forces tending to
gather around opposite poles, each of which represented something ultra- modern.
England, while conservative socially, led in industrial, commercial, and financial
development, and in its network of relationships with the transoceanic world.
France, by no means economically backward, had become through the Revolution
11 See W. N. Chambers, Political Parties in a New Nation: The American Experience 1776–1809
(New York, 1963); R. L. Ketcham, “France and American Politics, 1763–93”; in Political Science Quar-
terly, LX XVIII (1963), 198–223; and forthcoming studies by S. M. Lipset.