SMU: American Political Thought Midterm 1.

American Dream (Authors/Texts)

Intro: Americans know instinctively what it means: a fair chance to succeed in open competition with others for the good things of life. The grand promise of the American Dream has always been that those willing to learn, work, save, persevere, and play by the rules will have a better chance to grow and prosper in America than anywhere else on earth. Robert Beverly “A good poor man’s country.”

1. Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography): As discussed in class, the most famous American, inventor, and thinker: Embodied the self-made man ideal. Advocated for personal virtue, industry, and self-improvement as paths to success in his autobiography. Themes largely emphasized in the American Dream.

2. Crevecoeur - (MELTING POT)Letters from an American Farmer. : Painted America as a land of opportunity but acknowledged racial and social inequalities. (What is an American?) Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.

3. Early works of fiction like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Henry Adams’s “Democracy (important analogy), often depicted the inherit contradictories rampant in the promise of the “american dream” and led to controversy…

4. Question: Acknowledge the hypocrisy: Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness? But to whom? Thus centers the debate for the next few centuries and continues to this very day. - Rationale for exclusion

Liberty and Order (Authors/Texts)

Intro: Life? Sure, we know what that means. Pursuit of happiness? Do what makes you content without hurting anyone. Liberty? Now all of a sudden everyone disagrees. What is liberty? To whom is it extended? What about religion, race, and gender? These were the questions colonial and founding thinkers like, John Winthrop, James Madison, and

1. John Winthrop: Puritan leader who outlined two kinds of liberty in his little speech on liberty. Natural liberty (basically one doing whatever he pleases) and Civil Liberty (Acting in accordance to the law and God). Covenanted community. Wives are to their husbands as churches are to God.
   (Loosening of the Spring happens)

2. James Madison: Conversely in “Against Religious Assessments”, Madison argued that it is crucial that church and state remain separate as any government power over religion, however small, opens the door to greater encroachments on religious freedom. He warns that "it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties." Religion is a matter between individuals and their Creator, beyond the reach of civil authority. Government involvement in religion corrupts both institutions. Religious establishments have historically led to tyranny and persecution

3. Jonathan Edwards: His emphasis on personal conversion experience and individual relationship with God reinforced individualistic tendencies in American thought, though this connection is contested.

4. George Washington Warned against political factions and foreign entanglements in 'Farewell Address.' Saw stability and moral order as essential to liberty.

5. Conflicting views about the size of the government and the potential impacts it might have on citizen’s liberty. Comes down to Federalist vs. Anti-Federalists..

6. Women, “Remember the ladies” - Abigail and John Adams

7. Race.

Jefferson and Hamilton (Authors/Texts)

Intro: After the American Revolutionary War, there was a sense of “Now what?” amongst the newly independent citizens and law makers. What should our new government look like? Who/what should it be modeled after? What institutions? And how about size? Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton proposed to conflicting ideas about

Jefferson: (Democratic Republican, Jeffersonian Agrarian Ideal) envisioned an agrarian republic of independent farmers (Honest, Yeoman Farmers). He opposed the national bank as unconstitutional and dangerous, feared finance and manufacturing would create urban poverty and corruption, and wanted to keep America primarily agricultural. Advocated strict construction—the federal government should only exercise powers specifically listed in the Constitution. He championed states' rights and feared concentrated federal power would become tyrannical.

Hamilton: (Federalist, Federalist Industrial Vision) wanted an industrial, commercial economy centered on manufacturing, banking, and trade. He created the national bank, assumed state Revolutionary War debts to strengthen federal credit, and promoted tariffs to protect American industry. favored strong central government with "loose construction" of the Constitution—using implied powers and the "necessary and proper" clause to expand federal authority beyond explicitly enumerated powers.

Religion (Authors/Texts)

John Winthrop (Little Speech on Liberty): Establishes two kinds of liberty (Natural liberty and civil/moral liberty). Winthrop argued that pursuing moral liberty by living in accordance to the laws of god and men was true liberty. Puritan core beliefs: Hierarchy, Anti-individualistic, Covenanted community,

Roger Williams: “The Bloody Tenet of Persecution” A Puritan minister banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 for his radical religious views. He founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious freedom and maintained that civil authorities had no jurisdiction over matters of conscience.

"The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution" (1644):

Written as a dialogue between Truth and Peace, this work argues forcefully against religious persecution and for complete separation of church and state.

Key arguments:

• Forced religion is worthless - Coerced worship is spiritually meaningless and offensive to God. True faith must be voluntary.

• Separation of church and state - Civil government has authority only over civil matters (body and property), not spiritual matters (soul and conscience). Mixing the two corrupts both.

• No state church - Government shouldn't establish, fund, or enforce any religion. Even "true" religion shouldn't be imposed by force.

• Liberty of conscience - All people, including non-Christians and those in "error," deserve religious freedom. Persecution for conscience violates natural rights.

• The "garden in the wilderness" metaphor - The church is a garden that must be protected from the corrupting "wilderness" of the world, not by government enforcement but by maintaining spiritual purity.
  

James Madison: “Against Religious Assessments” Separation of Church and State…

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter - Hester Prynne…

Race, Gender (Authors/Texts)

1. Benjamin Rush “An Address Upon Slave Keeping”.

Key arguments:

1. Slavery violates natural rights - All humans have natural rights to liberty; slavery contradicts the principles of justice and Christianity

2. Religious/moral condemnation - Slavery is a sin against God and Christian teaching. Rush appeals to biblical principles of human equality and the Golden Rule

3. Debunking justifications - Systematically refutes common pro-slavery arguments:

   • Africans aren't inferior or "cursed"

   • Slavery isn't justified by "rescuing" Africans from worse conditions

   • Economic arguments don't override moral imperatives

4. Corrupts slaveholders - Slavery degrades masters morally, making them cruel and tyrannical

5. Call to action - Urges immediate abolition and colonists to recognize their hypocrisy in seeking freedom from Britain while enslaving others

2. Works of Fiction reflecting real life issues in early American History:
   
   Race: Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom’s Cabin: An anti-slavery novel that follows several enslaved people's experiences under slavery, designed to humanize enslaved people and expose slavery's cruelty to Northern readers.
   
   James F. Cooper - Leatherstocking Tales - The last of the Mohicans: Centers around Alice and Cora Munro and a Major being escorted by Hawkeye. The Major wants to mary Alice, but their father perceives this as the Major being discriminatory toward his Eldest Cora who is darker complected. However, he marries Alice anyway and Cora is taken by Native Americans, but kills herself before anything can be done to her. The story reinforces the stereotype of mixed-race individuals leading tragic lives in literature.
   
   Clotel: William Brown - Historical fiction about Jefferson’s mixed race daughter. Clotel is bought and sold several times, misled and lied to even by her husbands.
   
   3. Gender: I cannot but laugh. - John Addams.
   
   Nathaniel Hawthorne: Scarlet Letter:

Abigail Addams: Letters - “Remember the ladies”

Judith Sargent Murray "On the Equality of the Sexes" : Women are equally capable in their reason as men, formal education is just not extended to them. Women are stronger in memory and imagination than men. Educated women will not forget their domestic requirements, but they will be better partners to their husband by playing a FULLER ROLE in their household. If women aren’t educated they cannot raise educated, republican children

Founders (Federalists vs Anti-federalists) (Authors/Texts)

Federalists: Federalist Papers (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison).

PURPOSE: Ease the American people of their concerns about the constitution and how it will be safe. Hamilton wrote the most: 

KEY TO THE BROADER DOCUMENT: ONE – Federalist X Madison – describes the danger that has destroyed popular (republican) The greatest threat is factionalism. (interest groups/political parties, organized opinion that is pushed upon politicians)

Federalist No. 51 (Madison) separation of powers creates internal checks; federalism provides double security

Federalist No. 78 (Hamilton) - Defends judicial review; judiciary is "least dangerous branch" with neither purse nor sword

Federalist No. 84 (Hamilton) - Argues Bill of Rights unnecessary because Constitution grants only enumerated powers; listing rights might imply government has power over unlisted ones


ANTI-FEDERALIST: Brutus and Cato:

We need a bill of rights. The Anti-Federalists opposed ratifying the Constitution (1787-88), fearing it created too powerful a central government that would destroy liberty and state sovereignty.

Distant government breeds tyranny - A far-away national government couldn't represent local interests and would become disconnected from the people.

• Constitution gave too much power - Especially through the "necessary and proper" clause, supremacy clause, and taxing power—federal government would swallow state authority.

• Standing armies are dangerous - The Constitution allowed a permanent military that could potentially suppress liberty.

• No Bill of Rights - The Constitution lacked explicit protections for fundamental liberties.

• Anti-aristocratic - Feared the Constitution favored wealthy elites over common people; long terms and indirect elections (Senate, President) were undemocratic.
  

Letters from an American Farmer

"Letters from an American Farmer" is a 1782 work by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, written as a series of essays in epistolary form. The book, supposedly written by a fictional Pennsylvania farmer named James, explores American life and identity in the colonial period just before the Revolution.

The most famous section is Letter III, "What Is an American?", which presents the idea that America creates a "new man" through its unique blend of European cultures, emphasis on self-reliance, and opportunities for social mobility. Crèvecœur portrays America as a land where hard work and merit replace the rigid class hierarchies of Europe.

The later letters become darker, particularly the final ones dealing with the chaos of the Revolutionary War, which disrupts the idyllic agrarian society Crèvecœur initially celebrates. The work remains influential in American literature for its early articulation of American exceptionalism and the "melting pot" concept, though modern readers also note its problematic elements, including its romanticization of slavery and treatment of Native Americans.

Benjamin Franklin (Autobiography)