Lehrman American Studies Center

Overview

“A new political science is needed for a world altogether new.”

—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

It is often said that American politics is wholly liberal, that it rests upon the fundamental principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence. Yet there are currents in American Political Thought that are antagonistic to liberal understandings. Even the Declaration itself—often taken to be the great pronouncement of liberal thought—speaks to values and concepts in tension with liberalism. Indeed, American Political Thought might be characterized as a perpetual debate about how best to order these potentially competing values and concepts, how, that is, to foster and sustain these disparate elements of the American regime. Thus we see, throughout American history, the agonistic struggle between nature and convention, liberty and equality, liberalism and democracy, individualism and community, and universalism and patriotism. This course focuses on these foundational debates within American Political Thought from the “Puritan Founding” to present day debates about “multiculturalism” and what it means, if anything, to be an American.

Texts

• Thomas Paine, Common Sense

• Hamilton, Madison, & Jay, The Federalist Papers

• Herbert Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were FOR

• Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

• Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

• Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States

• James Ceaser, Reconstructing America

Course Packet

Requirements

Beyond introducing you to the foundations of American Political Thought, this class is meant to foster your analytical and writing skills. Students are expected to have carefully and thoughtfully done the reading prior to each class. This may mean reading important materials more than once. Class will be run as a combination of discussion and lecture. You will be expected to raise and answer questions (whether your hand is raised or not). The reading is a key component of the course and central to your understanding and education: you are expected to do all of it. The papers are aimed at getting you to write lucidly and analytically, forcing you to wrestle with important ideas, and seeing that you can explain them in a clear and thoughtful manner.

Three 5-7 page papers (25% each) Class participation (25%)

All components of the course must be completed to receive a passing grade. To participate, you must obviously be in class. Thus excessive absences will result in failure.

Course Schedule

Week 1: The Puritan Founding

• The Mayflower Compact

• John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity”

• Winthrop, “On Arbitrary Government”

• Roger Williams, “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience”

• Cotton Mather, “The People of God”

• The Massachusetts Body of Liberties

Week 2: Revolution and The Natural Rights (Re)Founding?

• John Dickinson, “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania”

• Thomas Paine, Common Sense

• John Adams, “Thoughts on Government”

• Alexander Hamilton, “The Farmer Refuted”

• Declaration of Independence

• Adams, letter on the American Revolution

• Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee on the object of the Declaration

Week 3: The New Science of Politics

• Publius, The Federalist

• Recommended: Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Week 4: Anti-Federalists and the New Science of Politics

• Brutus, I, VII, X, XI, XV

• Richard Henry Lee, Letters from the Federal Farmer I-V

• Recommended: Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Week 5: A Compound Republic

• John Calhoun, “A Disquisition on Government”

• Calhoun, “Speech on the Slave Question”

Week 6: Transcendentalism, Democratic Statesmanship, and Comic Enlightenment

• Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson

• Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

• Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”

Week 7: Natural Right and Popular Sovereignty

• The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, First and Seventh

• Abraham Lincoln, “Lyceum Address”

• Lincoln, “First Inaugural”

• Lincoln, "Gettysburg Address”

• Lincoln, “Second Inaugural”

Week 8: What Country Have I?

• Fredrick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” & “Oration on the Memory of Abraham Lincoln”

• Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery

• W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk

• Tocqueville, Democracy in America, I, II, Ch. 10

Week 9: Progressive Democracy as History?

• Woodrow Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States

• Herbert Croly, Progressive Democracy

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “The Commonwealth Club Address”

Week 10: The Procedural Republic?

• Amy Gutmann, “Democratic Deliberation”

• Michael Sandel, Democracy's Discontent, Ch. 1-2

• Peter Berkowitz, “The Debating Society”

Week 11: Multiculturalism and Identity

• Abraham Lincoln, “Eulogy for Henry Clay”

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “The Solitude of Self”

• Martin Luther King, Jr., “I Have a Dream”

• Kwamia Anthony Appiah, “The Limits of Pluralism”

• Anne Norton, "The Virtues of Multiculturalism"

• James Ceaser, "Multiculturalism and American Liberal Democracy"

• Samuel Huntington, “Who Are We?”

• Charles Kesler, “The Crisis of American National Identity”

Week 12: The Idea of America

• James Ceaser, Reconstructing America, Intro-Ch. 3 & Ch. 8-Conclusion