The Political Character of Sympathy

The generation of scholars responsible for establishing classical republicanism as dominant paradigm for explaining Revolution premised its view on opposition of virtue and corruption in government. This has sparked many scholarly discussions over years on relative value of liberal ideas and republicanism (the relative strength of individualism versus concept of public good). But, as many have also suggested, paradigm says far too little about emotional content of actual speech, culture of speechmaking, and reading and writing in Republic more generally. This essay means to expand upon what I set out to do in writing Sentimental Democracy, to engage closely with elements missing from republicanism-liberalism formula, especially sentimental identity embraced in Revolution-era speech. The language of sentiment and sympathy held an irresistible appeal to founders while conveying republican thought beyond elite culture. It was used to describe character of Americans in very personal terms, humanizing abstract notion of the people. Yet historians have undervalued sentimental language, while literary scholars and theorists who write of sentimentalism routinely avoid trenches in which political actors operated. What is at stake here is defining what we mean by political. For reason, I wish to demonstrate political resonance of prevailing sympathetic discourse, take it in context, and give it fuller application. Nearly quarter-century after his Creation of Republic described founding with classical republican vocabulary and in constitutional terms, Gordon S. Wood made an effort to synthesize movement from republicanism to democracy-that energetic democracy to which Jackson gave his name but in fact legitimated rather than created. Wood's 1992 book, The Radicalism of Revolution, may have enjoyed mixed reception (historians have trained themselves to be skeptical of any synthetic work); yet I intend to show that his redefinition of citizenship in postrevolutionary decades, and his fairly brief but leading suggestion that sympathy and compassion held an important role in this new republicanized world, are more significant than even Wood, perhaps, would maintain. In regard, I will concentrate on chapters of his book that segue from Benevolence under republicanism to Equality under democracy. Whether Revolution was as radical as Wood's title proposes (that it contained a decidedly social message) is less important here than his understanding that powerful idiom existed whereby practice of humanity was believed by many to be glue that would unite classes and geographical sections; and that ideology we are speaking to held at least as wide an appeal as the belief in ascetic classical virtue.1 According to Wood, an emerging morality consistent with eighteenth-- century scientific investigation and Enlightenment optimism and cosmopolitanism made friendship appear to be viable political principle. I go beyond this, and state unequivocally that sentiment was critical tool (heretofore marginalized or feminized) in defining cause of Independence in opposition to political parent in 1776, and that, ever since, sentiment/sympathy has been distinguishing component of America's national self-image and at core of its foreign policy. Indeed, nothing has been more than sentimental persuasion. Let me add necessary clarification. Those with an aversion to terms such as democracy, nation, America, or American, purport that these are monolithic constructions. They are fluid terms, rather, and critics need to appreciate that America and American were readily understood by historical actors across political generations as terms by which to identify themselves, and to express an ideal of unity. Thus American sensibility or political sympathy I invoke represents widely shared assumptions acted out in political discourse. …