Conservatism and Southern Intellectuals, 1789-1861: Liberty, Tradition, and the Good Society

Conservatism and Southern Intellectuals, 1789-1861: Liberty, Tradition, and the Good Society by Adam L. Tate. Hardcover: 402 pages. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2005), $49.95.

Review by Ryan Setliff

"A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge. The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead."
—George Eliot

The Southern Conservative Tradition

This is an authoritative exposition of southern conservative thought from 1789 to 1861. Tate meticulously expounds upon the prescriptive politics and social vision of various southern conservatives prominent in the early nineteenth century. Adam Tate makes an intellectual leap into southern conservatism by elucidating upon the Old Republicans with remarkable clarity. The southern tradition deserves careful examination and Tate is keenly meticulous in this most well-written and methodical account. Additionally, he offers an erudite exposition of the political and social thought of John Randolph of Roanoke and John Taylor of Caroline; as well as southern nationalists Nathaniel Beverly Tucker and William Gilmore Simms; and the oft-neglected southern Whigs Joseph Glover Baldwin and John Jones Hooper. In his broad survey, Tate incisively elaborates on their varied perspective about states' rights, republicanism, economics, slavery, community, religion, sectionalism, and western expansion.

Tate recollects the statesmanship and civil society views of the Old Republican stalwarts, that is John Randolph of Roanoke and John Taylor of Caroline. Tate perceptively explains, "[t]he Old Republicans blended anti-Federalism, Virginia's legal culture, the Principles of `98 taken from the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and the thought of British conservative Edmund Burke to create a constellation of ideas that has been classified as southern conservatism" (p. 8).

Liberty, according to the Old Republicans, was necessary for the good society. It was the natural institutions of society that were to achieve morality and economic prosperity without the overbearing, artificial coercive action by the state. In final appeal, the coercive action of the state to achieve such ends was self-defeating — because it was represented an attack on civil society. Thus, the southern intellectual tradition readily distinguished between state and society. "The Old Republicans," notes Tate, "saw the interference of the state in society as dangerous and something to be avoided" (p. 30). The remarkable sobriety of southern conservatives and their prudent politics of prescription are very much compatible with liberty and the good society. Sadly, the hopeless moderns in the United States have trouble distinguishing between society and state, which has wrought out a mélange of social, cultural and even spiritual pathologies. We would do well to revisit the prescriptive wisdom of the Old Republicans.

Adam Tate elucidates with clarity upon the common thread amongst various southern intellectuals. Likewise, he captures the various nuances and dissimilarities with remarkable clarity as well. Tate reveals the philosophical influence that Christianity had upon the Old Republicans:

Randolph perceived in Christianity a brotherhood of the faithful bound together by love and traditions of the faith. Christianity, like society, was ultimately a family. Thus Christianity complemented his familial social vision (p. 101).

Unlike Randolph, Taylor in fact preferred Thomas Paine to Edmund Burke — and tended to express the virtue of freedom and individualism more so than notions of a traditional society. The only traditional institution, Taylor extolled was that of the family.

Tate makes it clear that the more libertarian-minded southerners were generally not so quixotic as to see a role for the state in molding and inculcating virtue. Northern religionists were often seen as "intolerant, malicious, secretly impious, and essentially anti-republican in using the state to promote religion" to borrow Taylor's words. Such Pharisaic tendencies were anathema to the south. Virginia, of course, was the Jeffersonian Commonwealth that advanced religious freedom and freedom of conscience as expressed in the Virginia Declaration of Religious Liberties. Given internecine wars of religion in Europe, the Old Republicans felt it demonstrably better to let society develop unhindered by state coercion or a state-established church body. Yet they praised the virtues of localism, community, church and voluntary civil associations — the "little platoons" as Edmund Burke dubbed them.

"The heart of Old Republican political economy was the idea that the state should be separated from social affairs so that societies could develop independently" (p. 30). In marked contrast, the Hamiltonians advocated schemes of massive state subsidies, a funded debt, a national bank, protective tariffs, and even hoped to bring women and children into the labor pool as factory workers. "The Old Republicans," however, "admired the political economy of Adam Smith, especially his attack on mercantilism and advocacy of laissez-faire" (p. 53). Thus, the Old Republicans were ardent foes of the Hamiltonian system of subsidized capital. They saw mercantilist schemes as anathema to the spirit of republicanism, as corrosive of the body politic, and means to oppress the people by plundering them. The Old Republicans believed "[a]n economic system promoting liberty would have only hard money, regulated by supply and demand through the just exchange of goods among consenting people" (p. 57).

As a pamphleteer, Taylor penned some stellar polemics against the schemes and machinations of the Hamiltonians from the 1790s onward, and he advocated a "natural economy." Tate judiciously surmises the Old Republican view on political economy:

Government often acted in ways to deceive the natural interests, through taxes, especially tariffs, and other bounties for manufactures, and robbed labor. Such taxes transferred the value and wealth created by honest, productive labor to the government or some social order that was artificial and essentially unproductive (p. 41).

Taylor opposed internal improvements at federal expense on libertarian grounds, asserting that the federal government should not bring its influence into local matters, thereby destroying self-government. He argued that internal improvements should be conducted strictly on an individual basis. If a farmer wanted to get his crops to market, let him and his neighbors build a road. Internal improvements sponsored by the federal government hampered the natural development of industry and the talent of individuals... Randolph argued that the Constitution did not allow for the general government to construct roads and canals throughout the country, except for post roads. He attacked congressmen who tried to interpret the post road clause too liberally in order to gain money for internal improvements. He warned that control of internal improvements by Congress would result in corruption of the worst kind (p. 60).

With the ascent of Henry Clay, the Whig Party and later Abraham Lincoln, Randolph's warning proved prophetic, as internal improvements become a euphemism for nothing more than corporate welfare, legal plunder and boondoggle public works projects.

The principled Old Republicans even threw derision on their party leader Thomas Jefferson and broke with him for compromising principle for expediency — particularly with his Yazoo compromise in 1806, which bailed out corrupt land speculators with federal funds. To be tongue-in-cheek, the Old Republicans were arguably more Jeffersonian than Jefferson himself — and in any case they marshaled extreme consistency of principle. In fact, Randolph opposed the Embargo Act and was steadfast in his advocacy of free trade.

Both Randolph and Taylor had a social vision that incorporated economic laissez-faire and a rejection of artificial contrivance and economic manipulation by the state. They feared the corrupt "monied aristocracy" would eventually gain a foothold in government, and thoroughly corrupt the body politic. Randolph particularly despised the dislocations wrought against the communities of Old Virginia by the artificial schemes of subsidized development in the West.

As historian Robert Kelley surmised the Old South had embraced "libertarian republicanism." And of course, states' rights were the rallying cry of the Old Republicans. Also, they esteemed the decentralized militia which was seen as the bulwark of liberties against a large standing national army. They quite naturally saw themselves as the guardians of the federal character of the Union, which in their view was a confederacy of states, joined by consent and founded in compact. The Old Republicans were adamant that "[t]he people of the several states never relinquished their sovereignty. Hence, the states were `state-nations.' State-nations composed the United States and retained all the rights of nations not expressly delegated to the federal government". John Taylor held, that the state governments acted as "tribunes of the people," as they were "intrusted with all rights bestowed for the preservation of [the people's] liberty" and they could surrender the protection of these liberties as they were innate and unalienable. Therefore, the Old Republican view was fundamentally opposed to nationalism, and the consolidationists who thought of the Union as an end in itself, and not a means to an end—namely liberty and security (p. 33).

In 1813, Randolph declared the Old Republican principles to be,

[L]ove of peace, hatred of offensive war, jealously of the state governments toward the general government; a loathing of public debts, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealously, Argus-eyed jealously of the patronage of the President (p. 37).

Additionally, the English libertarian tradition embodied in Cato's Letters deeply influenced the Old Republicans. They frequently alluded to the "country" and "court" dichotomy made John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, and "their understanding of history as a constant struggle between liberty and power". The "court party" favored a mercantilist state — with an attendant spoils system based on fiat money and legal plunder. The "court party" attracted those who desired to gain wealth through artificial means and political manipulation. In contrast, the Old Republicans embraced the country philosophy and extolled the agrarian virtues of the landed freeholder such as independence, self-reliance, hard work, honest labor and personal responsibility (p. 39).

In his twilight years, Randolph lamented the ascent of radical egalitarianism, political patronage, and the fiduciary elite surrounding the national bank. Shortly before his death, Randolph fired out one of his most resounding oratory in his King Numbers speech as the Commonwealth of Virginia held a state constitutional convention to supplant the cherished 1776 constitution with a new document.

In elaborating upon the political principles and statesmanship of Nathaniel Beverly Tucker (a son of St. George Tucker) and William Gilmore Simms, Tate thoughtfully traces their continuity with the Old Republican tradition, as well as their originality. Nathaniel was deeply influenced by his half-brother John Randolph. In the midst of family problems and disputes at Caroline, Tucker eventually opted to move West to Missouri. There "Tucker involved himself in politics," notes Tate. "He wrote newspaper essays defending states' rights and professing loyalty to the Old Republican Principles of '98. Initially, involved in Missouri's Democratic Party, he found that his positions made him an welcome minority. He ran for Congress as Independent in 1832" before withdrawing from the race. "Tucker expressed a distrust of political parties" and like Randolph was eventually repulsed at Jackson and "the Proclamation and Force Bill during the Nullification controversy." After Randolph's death, he learned that he had been elected to fill his father St. George's seat as professor of law at William and Mary. In his capacity as a law professor he echoed the states' rights constitutionalism of Spencer Roane and Abel Upshur as opposed to "the nationalistic school of constitutional law led by Joseph Story." Furthermore, Tate presents their economic critique of the American System. While Tucker and Simms possessed similarities with the Old Republicans, they were also possessed of an ingenuity and originality of their own. Lastly Tate illustrates that the southern intellectual tradition was "neither static nor monolithic."

In chronicling the political thought of Baldwin and Hooper who were prominent southern Whig Party members in the South, Tate tries to make it understandable that southern Whig thought was in essence conservative. This underlying conservatism is manifest in the statesmanship of Confederate Vice President Alexander Hamilton Stephens who was a southern Whig before becoming a Democrat. Tate reminds us that these southern Whigs embraced States' rights doctrine too, but as Baldwin insisted "the federal and state governments were not rivals" since the founding fathers intended the two governments to be "co-ordinates" not "rivals" as "[t]he federal government managed `national affairs,' and the state governments managed `domestic concerns,' so states' rights was so much of a defensive doctrine as the Old Republicans make it out to be" (p. 279). Baldwin, for example, "viewed consolidated government as an evil," notes Tate. Baldwin held that such a government "would soon fall to pieces by its own cabals and corruptions." Whig party loyalty didn't necessarily stifle sectional loyalty for the common good of the south, as Hooper urged Whigs to form a "southern phalanx" with the Democrats to defend certain interests, so the South "could safely leave the direction of its destiny." In the sectional crisis of the 1850's, the Whig Party fractured along a north-south fissure just like the Democratic Party, and ultimately the Whig Party was eviscerated.

All things considered, Adam Tate has put together a meticulous, exhaustively researched account of the varieties of antebellum southern conservatism. His analysis of the southern intellectual tradition is appreciative and yet objective all the same. Tate's book is painstakingly detailed, insightful and the text is fluid and crisp. It makes for enjoyable and informative reading — even for those only mildly interested in the subject matter. He recognizes that while southern intellectuals forged a common political tradition based upon the Old Republican states' rights tradition embodied in the Principles of 1798, they were possessed of considerable distinctions and disagreements which prevented the development of a cohesive social vision. Rigorous and straightforward, Tate has laid some impressive groundwork which explains the distinctive southern intellectual tradition.

Compared to other earlier books on the subject of southern conservatism which are maligned by shoddy analysis, Tate's book is nearly impeccable. Adam Tate adroitly clears the air and tosses out the reductionism of various Marxists historiographers, as well as earlier scholars like Norman Risjord, Louis Hartz and Richard Hoftstadter. In their flawed analyses of southern conservatives, some historians have gone so far as to reinterpret the Old Republican's embrace of the "Court Party" and "Country Party" dichotomy, through the lens of Marxist class struggle dogma. This is a most spurious correlation and far from the intent of its expositors like John Taylor. Taylor was an enemy of subsidized capital, patronage, privilege, and legal plunder — not the market economy, or what we know today, as capitalism.

Paul Gottfried has described Tate's book as "an exhaustively researched and carefully written account of the varieties of antebellum Southern conservatism." Tate's book is worthy successor to an earlier book on southern conservatism by Eugene Genovese entitled The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism, though Genovese is more succinct and covers the southern tradition from eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.

Overall, Tate's book is a splendid contribution to political science, and it gives depth, clarity and elucidation to the varieties of antebellum southern conservatism. He presents a distinctive southern conservatism imbued by esteem for community, provincialism, a desire for economic laissez-faire, and an animosity towards political centralization. Tate is to be commended for his erudite historical research and meticulous attention to detail. He offers an incisive examination of the southern conservative tradition spanning from the late eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth century.