Politics

The Colonial Era

In the early colonies of New England, the sphere of politics was entirely subordinated to religious authority. The rulers of the Puritan colonies were deeply religious men who based their authority on Old Testament models of patriarchy. Thus, the Puritan pastor and religious scholar Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia Christi Americana: or, The Ecclesiastical History of New-England (1702), compared his chronicles to the books of Moses, which recorded the lives of the “Ante-Diluvian Patriarchs.” Political manhood in the Puritan colonial tradition derived from the prophetic and evangelical tradition of Protestant Christianity—political power and the manhood it defined were understood in terms of maintaining and expanding the community of Christians in the “wilderness” of the New World.

Although this political system was based on the idea of the religious covenant, it was not democratic in the modern electoral sense. Leaders did not campaign, nor were they popularly elected, as such a process was understood to appeal to selfish interests, not to the spiritual health and political integrity of the community. But their selection for office signified community acknowledgment of their spiritual strength and soundness of judgment—in short, of their manhood.

In the southern colonies, economic gain and the extension of European royal authority were more important than prophetic mission, and the gradual expansion of slavery into the plantation system resulted in an aristocratic paternalism that contrasted considerably with the developing political tradition in the New England colonies. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the South bred an entire generation of gentlemen farmers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and many others, whose combination of political and paternalistic authority would dominate the early decades of the post-Revolutionary government. In many ways, this model of masculine political authority was based on European models of aristocratic privilege, in which manhood and power derived from land ownership and good “breeding.” Although these leaders were elected, the franchise (vote) was still restricted to propertied males (who affirmed a candidate's manliness through their votes). Campaigning, in the modern sense, had not yet emerged. Rather, wealthy candidates would organize social events for party members at which alcohol was generously distributed as a mechanism of forging political community among likeminded men.

The Eighteenth Century

In the rapidly growing cities and towns of eighteenth-century America, another model of political manhood emerged that would contribute much of the energy and manpower behind the Revolution. The independent artisan, whose masculinity derived from economic autonomy and a communal identification based in independent crafts and trades, was a powerful political force in the colonies. While the founding fathers deliberated over the Declaration of Independence in the Philadelphia State House, these men demonstrated in the streets and argued in the local taverns, enacting a more boisterous and rowdy model of American democracy.

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