Jeffersonian Principals: The New York Times, 1899

Posted on August 19th, 2009

Here is a timely blast from the past from the March 23, 1899 edition of The New York Times that is extremely relevant today. I have added informational links and italics for quotes by Thomas Jefferson.

I highly recommend visiting the links about people mentioned in this story, so many of the people commonly known in 1899 are not very well known today. Pay particular attention to how goodhearted, but socially meddlesome Christians promoting a “Social Gospel” (William Jennings Bryan) played right into the hands of hard core socialists (Eugene V. Debs).

[Update] Sigh, for those of you emailing to tell me that I misspelled “Principals”. I *thought* it was a clever play on words. Because I had linked to the “principal” players in what amounted to, in my opinion, the first step in the Democratic Party’s slide toward socialism. I guess it wasn’t as clever as I thought.

There is a deal of prating in these days about the principles of THOMAS JEFFERSON, the founder of the Democratic Party. Some of the praters understand the political philosophy of JEFFERSON as little as they understand the philosophies of HEGEL and SCHOPENHAUER. Mr BRYAN writes of “Democrats who stand upon the Chicago platform,” and the promoters of the dollar dinner of silver men and Socialists announce that the true Jeffersonian principles are to be honored and expounded at that frugal board.

Upon this fog of ignorance and audacious misrepresentation let us direct some rays of light from the original source. Let THOMAS JEFFERSON speak for himself.

JEFFERSON’S political beliefs were expressed in their most compact and compendious form in his firs Inaugural Address, delivered on March 4, 1801, from which we quote a celebrated passage that ought to be familiar to every Democrat in the country [emphasis mine]:

“About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.

Equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religions or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of the general Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people – a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of the revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burdened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trail by juries impartially selected.

These principles should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust.”

This body of Democratic doctrine has been in the hands of every competent writer of party platforms since the custom was established of making a platform declaration of principles. This “creed of our political faith” was never flouted and repudiated in a convention assembled in the name of Democracy until Democracy was overwhelmed by Populism at Chicago in 1896 [emphasis mine].

JEFFERSON was a believer in a specie currency, gold and silver, coined at a ration determined by their commercial value. Black is not more different from white than that doctrine from the Bryan doctrine of coinage at the arbitrary ratio of 16 to 1. Writing on Sept 11, 1813, to JOHN WAYLES EPPES, JEFFERSON said:

“To trade on equal terms the common measure of values should be as nearly as possible on a par with that of its corresponding nations, whose medium is in a sound state; that is to say, not in an accidental state of excess or deficiency. Now one of the great advantages of specie as a medium is that, being of universal value, it will keep itself at a general level, flowing out from where it is too high into parts where it is lower.”

Every argument that JEFFERSON made against an inflated paper currency of fluctuating value holds good to-day against the silver monometallism of BRYAN. The founder of the Democratic Party declared for a stable measure of value that should be “as nearly as possible on a par” with the measure of value in use in the countries with which trade relations are maintained. Interpreted by its fundamental principle of stability and the plain intent of his language, JEFFERSON’s financial teaching leads straight to gold as the stand and measure of value and can lead nowhere else.

When the upholder of BRYAN and the Chicago platform appeal to THOMAS JEFFERSON as the source of their doctrine and authority they insult his memory and assert an impossible kinship. They attempt to dignify their creed by clothing it with an antiquity to which it can establish no title. If they seek a parentage for their beliefs let them look for it in the Ocala platform and in the utterances of EUGENE V. DEBS.

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2 Responses to “Jeffersonian Principals: The New York Times, 1899”

1. eLwood Says:
   August 19th, 2009 at 4:29 pm

   And let the Republicons align them selves with whom?

   Surely not Abraham Lincoln who wrote:

   The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point. From this point, however, men immediately diverge. Much disputation is maintained as to the best way of applying and controlling the labor element. By some it is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital – that nobody labors, unless somebody else owning capital, somehow, by the use of it, induces him to do it. Having assumed this, they proceed to consider whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their

   own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it, without their consent. Having proceeded so far, they naturally conclude that all laborers are naturally either hired laborers or slaves. They further assume that whoever is once a hired laborer, is fatally fixed in that condition for life; and thence again, that his condition is as bad as, or worse than, that of a slave. This is the “mud-sill” theory. But another class of reasoners hold the opinion that there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed; that there is no such thing as a free man being fatally fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer; that both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them groundless. They hold that labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor.

   Source here.

   .

2. Mark Martin Says:
   August 19th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

   eLwood,
   
   I cannot say that I disagree with anything that Lincoln says here in the full context of your source, and certainly within the context of his collected works. I am particularly aligned as it relates to labor preceding capital.
   
   Most of Lincoln’s works can be read online for free here:
   http://ow.ly/kE3g
   
   This reminds me of a person I recently learned about at one of our Arkansas State Parks. The Plantation Agriculture Museum:
   http://www.arkansasstateparks.com/plantationagriculturemuseum/
   
   His name is Scott Winfield Bond:
   http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=1594
   
   I found his story so compelling that I bought the book:
   Rudd, Dan A. and Theo. Bond. From Slavery to Wealth: The Life of Scott Bond. Edited by Willard B. Gatewood. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2008.
   
   I still have not read it yet, as soon as I stop allowing politics to take over my life, I look forward to sitting down to a good read.