BACK TO DR. CARROLL'S PAGE
HIST 3620 B. Carroll
Early National America Fall 2000
QUESTIONS FOR STUDY AND CONSIDERATION
Major Problems in the Early Republic
Ch. 3: "The Political Crises of the 1790s" (74-88)
Joyce O. Appleby, "Capitalism and the Rise of the Republican Opposition"
1. According to Appleby, what has traditionally led historians to interpret the Jeffersonian
Republicans as anticapitalist? What has made it possible to question this traditional
view?
2. According to Appleby, what kinds of people were attracted to Jeffersonian Republicanism?
3. According to Appleby, were the Jeffersonians "republicans" or "liberals,"
as we have defined this term?
4. According to Appleby, what effect did the foreign policy issues of the 1790s have
on the nature of American political life? Which group, Federalists or Republicans,
was the beneficiary of this change?
5. What were the Democratic-Republican societies? What sparked their emergence? What
was President WashingtonÌs reaction to them, and why?
6. Appleby suggests that France and England became "symbols" of "alternative
futures" in and for American political culture, and that public debate over
the French Revolution had exposed "opposing conceptions of society." What
were these alternative and opposing visions? Which was that of the Republicans?
7. How did the Democratic-Republican societies interpret and portray the actions
of their critics? What, according to Appleby, does this imply about the Republican
attitude toward the political assumptions of republicanism?
8. What does Appleby mean when she says (p.82) that the Republicans were driven by
a "principle of hope"? Hope for what? What made them so optimistic? What
was their view of human nature?
9. What model of economic life did the Republicans embrace? If the Republicans and
Federalists were "both dominated by modernists," what was the difference
between them?
10. Finally, look again at the title of ApplebyÌs piece. What does the title mean?
What was the relationship between capitalism and the rise of the Republican opposition?
What were the Republicans opposed to, if not capitalism?
John Ashworth, "Republicanism, Capitalism, and Slavery in the 1790s"
1. What problem does Ashworth have with ApplebyÌs portrayal of the Jeffersonian Republicans
and the Federalists?
2. According to Ashworth, in what respects were the Jeffersonians republican? In
what respects not?
3. Why does Ashworth take issue with ApplebyÌs definition of capitalism? What dimension
of capitalism did she miss? How did the Jeffersonians feel about this dimension of
capitalism? How does all of this bear on the question of whether the Jeffersonians
were republicans or liberal capitalists?
4. Why does Ashworth bring the question of slavery into his argument?