Special Article Just For Julia’s Gardeners: 

Did You Know?

The next time you are gardening, you might want to ponder that the matter of growing things (agriculture) became a topic of very serious debate when America’s new republic was in its formative period during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.  This was not a minor issue but rather an issue that had immediate and long term consequences for the new nation regarding both national policies and foreign relations.  It also contributed to the founding of political parties and party policy platforms.  It particularly became a major thematic issue between groups which will come to be called the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians, respectively.

How so?  Please allow us to provide a little background:  In the early era of the new nation, following the successful break from Britain, Americans needed to plot the course of the future economy of the United States.  There were those who believed America should participate in the Industrial Revolution that was gripping Europe and join the modern era as a manufacturing nation of modern commerce.  This was particularly the position of Alexander Hamilton who was the Secretary of the Treasury when the nation began its new history.   In opposition to this direction was a movement led by Thomas Jefferson, a major leader who will become President in 1800. 

For Jefferson, and most Americans at the time, there was something almost ennobling by farming.  It was viewed as keeping people in touch with nature, hard working, sensitive to life and death, and through a closer contact with the earth people, it was believed, would have a closer relationship with God.   It was believed that having most Americans engaged in agriculture would maintain and enhance a moral “goodness” in Americans.   Farming would maintain the family, honesty, trust, and a moral purity, almost and “innocence” among Americans.  Jefferson’s motto could have been “Keep America Green.”  Jefferson held this view not just because he was a gentleman farmer in Virginia but also because of his experience during the revolution as an American emissary to Europe. 

In European cities that he visited Jefferson noticed that vice and crime was rampant.  This was new to him and seemed to characterize cities overseas.   America, at the time, had no such large cities like London or Paris.  He attributed the growth of cities and urbanization correctly to industrialization and commerce – mercantile activities.  Therefore, if America were to remain free from avarice and crime, it would have to remain agricultural in its economic base.  He figured, as did many of his peers, that this would be easy because America was blessed with a superb climate and fertile soil which would allow it, as a nation, to become a bread basket food supplier for Europe and it could exchange its agricultural products for European manufactured products. 

Hamiltonians, characterized more by the merchant and shipping class of New England, thought that this was both foolish and backward.  America could be both they argued.  If America didn’t participate in the Industrial Revolution sweeping Europe it would fall behind, fail to be competitive as a national, and therefore international power, and this could make America vulnerable to attack, both militarily and in terms of economic domination.  America would fail to use the opportunity of freedom as a new nation to establish itself as a new and powerful nation with a diverse economic base. 

But the Jeffersonians didn’t see it that way because with increased manufacturing came cities, and urban working class, and the crime, greed, dishonesty and classes that characterized the problems of Europe.  This was a threat, from their perspective, to the democracy that had just been earn in struggle and the spilling of blood.  Democracy implied equality and cities led directly to class exploitation.  The family farm was best and democracy would be maintained by representatives in Congress and White House understanding what they believed to be a very simple truth.  Jeffersonians shall, consequently, when in control of the reins of government enact policies to enhance farming, along with all the village values and virtues that they believed accompanied it, at the expense of manufacturing.  For the most part, the Jeffersonians will prevail, followed by the Jacksonians, who will champion “the common man,” for the early part of America’s history. 

However, by the mid-nineteenth century a shift toward industrialization began to grow (for a lot of reasons to be explained at some other time).  The era following the Civil War to the turn of the 20^th century became the era of industrialization in American history and farmers began to take a back seat to policy makers as America moved to become industrialized and therefore urbanized.  To many farmers the America of the late 19^th century was not attractive, honest, God-fearing, or hard working.  Both the Democratic and Republican political parties seemed to be willing to do anything for the new captains of industry and rail giants wanted in exchange for campaign contributions. 

Feeling correctly abandoned by the two dominant parties, the farmers organized in the late 1880s a new political movement to protect themselves from this new America.  It will manifest itself ultimately in the establishment of the Populist Party (People’s Party) and will run presidential candidates in the elections of both 1892 and 1896.  As a third party without sufficient numbers to capture a national office such as President, it will fade as the Democratic Party picked up its campaign wishes and made them their own, which is typically what happens to third parties. 

Still, that doesn’t mean that populist sentiments are not currently in existence.  They are and that is why political pundits often talk about populist topics and wishes, populist appeals,  and how the two parties deal with them.  Many Americans don’t understand these conversations because they don’t really understand the history and therefore term “populism.”  However, as a result of this brief little historical lesson, you, dear reader, are no longer among them.  This is not a lesson, consequently, into understanding the past so much as it is to understanding the present and the current dialogue that characterizes political debate and issues today.  Welcome to the modern era and an issue of American politics that remains vibrant as the nation moves into the 21^st century!