Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860

Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon

Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815–1860 STEWART DAVENPORT

The University of Chicago Press chicago and london

s t e w a r t d a v e n p o r t is assistant professor of history at Pepperdine University. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2008 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2008 Printed in the United States of America 17 1 6 1 5 14 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 0 09 08

1 2 3 4 5

isbn-1 3: 978-0-226-1 3706-3 (cloth) isbn-1 0: 0-226-1 3706-6 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davenport, Stewart. Friends of the unrighteous mammon: northern Christians and market capitalism, 1 81 5–1 860 / Stewart Davenport. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn-1 3: 978-0-226-1 3706-3 (cloth: alk. paper) isbn-1 0: 0-226-1 3706-6 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Capitalism—Religious aspects— Christianity. 2. United States—Church history. I. Title. br1 1 5.c3d38 2008 261 .8
5097409034—dc22 2007034627 ∞  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1 992.

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Self and Society in an American Modernity

ix 1

i

“a ssu r ed ”—t he cler i ca l economi s ts

19

1 2 3 4 5

Originally Sinful: “Das Adam Smith Problem” and the “Dismal Science” People and Project Motivations Moral Problems, Scientific Solutions Utilitarian Conclusions—Moral Man, Moral Economy

23 35 49 59 73

ii

unresolved questions

85

6 7

The Inconsistently Virtuous Economy The Problem of the Poor

87 97

iii “o p p o sed ”—t he cont r a r i a ns

107

8 9 10 11

109 123 139 155

Stephen Colwell Orestes Brownson Before 1840 Orestes Brownson After 1840 Some Comparisons and Preliminary Conclusions

iv “a d a p t ed”—t he p a s t or a l mor a li sts 12 13 14 15

Paradox, People, and Project Boundaries, Balance, and Faculty Psychology Of Competition and Liberalism, Luxury and Speculation Divine Retribution and “Das Adam Smith Problem” Revisited

167 171 181 191 203

Conclusion: Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon

213

Notes Bibliography Index

221 249 261

Acknowledgments

i w o u l d like to begin by thanking all of the conversation partners over the years who have shaped more than just this book. In particular I would like to acknowledge Harry S. Stout and Jon Butler for the inspiration, support, and gentle criticism that helped launch this work. I would also like to thank that remarkable group of friends from New Haven: Wiebe Boer, Dave Bratt, Andrew Chignell, Jesse Coenhoven, Mark Cullison, Paul Dover, Chris Green, Eric Gregory, John Hinkson, Mike Horton, Jeremy Hultin, Will Inboden, David Legg, Dave Lumsdaine, David Mahan, Mary Noll, Ben Northrup, David Perry, Peter Rogers, Ben Sasse, and especially Greg and Jeanie Ganssle. I would also like to thank Pepperdine University, my academic home for the past five years. I am especially appreciative of the course release that allowed me the opportunity to focus, and for the support and understanding of the history faculty as I labored to bring this book to completion. I thank my three undergraduate research assistants, Nathanael Breeden, Crystal Buda, and Kim Lowe, for their invaluable legwork in tracking down sources and references, as well as for the much-needed technical assistance; and one colleague in particular, Don Marshall, for helping me navigate the perils and anxieties of the review process. I would also like to thank the members of the recently formed Seminar on the Person and Society at Pepperdine for the thrashing they gave me when I presented on this as a work in progress. Thank you for demonstrating—although outsiders might still be skeptical—that vigorous intellectual exchanges can take place in Malibu.

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acknowledgments

Southern California is indeed an interesting place to be an academic. There is a marvelous incongruity to thinking about das Adam Smith Problem in the morning and then bumping into Pamela Anderson in the afternoon. I find it all really quite fun and am grateful to have been brought to a city where I can talk about both the hermeneutic of suspicion and skin moisturizers all in the same day. I am especially thankful for my wonderful friends here who also walk the nearly absurd line between the things that really, really matter, and the things that really, really don’t. In particular thanks to Pamela Hieronymi, Mark Johnson, Jason and Olivia Mather, Tim Patterson, Jeff Raycher, Tom Reilly, and my sister and brother-in-law, Ashley and Josh Alford, for having the courage to move here so that we could (although briefly) be family again. I would also like to thank my wonderful church, Pacific Crossroads, for being a spiritual bedrock in the midst of such unstable geography. And I especially want to acknowledge my gratitude for the friendship of Chris and Lisa Hooper, simply two of the best people I have ever known. I have dedicated this book to my mom, who just so happens to be another one of the best people I have ever known. If the greatest of all are those who serve, then she is among the greatest. Thank you and Hugh for the many sacrifices you have made over the years on behalf of those whom you love. And to Mary, who fortunately for her met me at the very end of this project. Thank you for embodying the truth that love is patient and kind. Hopefully one day I will be. This book took ten years to complete, but by far the most important “work” of this past decade is finding you. We met later in life than I would have chosen, but God has indeed saved the best wine for last. Stewart Davenport Thanksgiving 2007

introduction

Self and Society in an American Modernity

t h i s b o o k seeks to address a single question: what did Christians in America think about capitalism when capitalism was first something to be thought about? Lurking behind this question is one of the central paradoxes of American history: Americans are and always have been some of the most voluntarily religious people in the world as well as some of the most grossly materialistic. In other words, Americans simultaneously and paradoxically subscribe to both the Christian ethic of humility and selflessness, and the American liberal-capitalist ethic of competition, success, and self-promotion. It is almost as if many Americans have gone about trying to understand themselves and their world with the Bible in one hand and John Locke in the other. Reconciling the two, however, has never been an easy task. One told them that “ye cannot serve God and mammon,”1 while the other unabashedly encouraged them to pursue lives of material happiness. In 1776, a few months before Thomas Jefferson plagiarized Locke and America was officially born, Adam Smith added fuel to this fire by describing and prescribing an economic system seemingly devoid of ethical considerations. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner,” Smith wrote, “but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love.”2 Fortunately, in the wonderful world of The Wealth of Nations, these same individuals, driven by “self-interest” but mysteriously guided by the “invisible hand,” ended up working for the good of the whole. Thus in its daily operations, the mechanism of market capitalism appeared to have no place for benevolence—or the “sympathy” that Smith had investigated in his 1

2

introduction

earlier tome, The Theory of Moral Sentiments—but ultimately it did more good than harm. Smith’s vision of a self-interested commercial society was not as problematic as the “Private Vices, Public Benefits” described by Bernard Mandeville in The Fable of the Bees, but it was still unclear exactly where Christian ethics and a Christian God fit into Smith’s capitalist economics. This merger—or clash—of Christian ethics and capitalist economics creates an enormous array of questions and issues to explore, ranging from the cosmic to the quotidian. Writers on the subject both past and present often jump freely from topics as grand as the nature of mankind and the divine purposes of global commerce, to the seemingly trivial questions of church budgets and whether one should give pocket change to beggars. And, for the most part, the list of ethical questions and conundrums only grows the more one looks. Perhaps the best way to approach an orderly understanding of the issues, therefore, is to clarify what is meant by Christian ethics and capitalist economics. And as we will see, insisting on these distinctions and more careful definitions is not an exercise in casuistic hair-splitting, but an important way of getting at the original question. How one defines capitalism, for example, determines when one believes capitalism came to be in America. Some scholars, for instance, insist that America has always been capitalistic— that, as Carl Degler overstates, “capitalism came in the first ships.”3 But in making this kind of declaration, such interpreters are really talking about liberalism and in particular the hallowed institution of private property and the opportunity many Americans throughout history have had to pursue it. The investigation here is concerned with the structures of capitalism that developed after 1815—structures such as a more sophisticated banking system and an expanding network of roads, canals, railroads, and steampowered river transportation that began to link Americans for the first time into internal markets of commodity exchange. This creation of a more developed infrastructure (famously and enduringly called the “transportation revolution” by George Rogers Taylor4 ) sparked an even broader economic and social transformation (called by some “the market revolution”5 ) that was felt throughout American society. Ultimately, the advent of a more efficient banking and transportation system created a more complicated market mechanism within which people freely exchanged commodities for cash. This was the beginning of American market capitalism.6 The development of a market mechanism after 1815 also began to create a class of people who could both navigate and possibly manipulate that mechanism. On the innocuous side, this structure dramatically expanded

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the merchant, managerial and banking professions—people who arranged for the efficient transportation, storage, distribution, and sale of goods, as well as the credit and risk assessments necessary for those operations. But on the shadier side were the speculators who could hold up the machine while waiting for a commodity’s demand, and thus its price, to increase, as well as the usurers who charged exorbitant interest rates to people desperately in need of credit. The market mechanism therefore could be either used or misused by its handlers—a central concern for the religious believers investigated here. Whether it inspired such behavior on a widespread basis or only in a few already corrupt individuals was one central question they sought to address. There was also reason to be concerned about the changing manufacturing technologies and organizational techniques of the unfolding market revolution. Although it is inaccurate to say that America was an industrial nation by 1860, it certainly had begun to industrialize. At the most basic level, American manufacturing experienced a dramatically increased division of labor—a development that would have pleased Adam Smith. In 1815 most manufacturing took place in single households where skilled artisans, along with their apprentices, made the clothes, shoes, and horseshoes that their customers requested. By 1860 workers in increasingly concentrated manufacturing centers produced finished products for markets that—thanks to the greater transportation networks—extended beyond their local communities, and they exchanged those products for cash or credit. In these manufacturing centers, labor was divided into more specialized tasks, sometimes relied on heavy machinery, and almost always operated according to an increasingly rigid work discipline that for the laborers was both novel and unwelcome. In 1860 America was still primarily an agricultural nation, but it was now second only to Great Britain in industrial production, a development that thrilled some and terrified others.7 All of this is to say that between 1815 and 1860 American Christians were confronting a world—and a host of ethical questions—unlike any they had ever seen. The Christian tradition has always disparaged greed, of course, and some believers have even thought—with apparently solid biblical justification—that wealth alone is a hindrance to entering the kingdom of God. Thus some of these questions and issues are as old as mammon itself, and there are sermons and other religious injunctions against ill-gotten gain in pre- or noncapitalist societies just as there are in capitalist ones. But in a developing market economy, how should employers treat wage earners? How should merchants treat customers? And especially, how should

4

introduction

competitors treat one another? Economics has always been about interdependence and relationships. But as Adam Smith emphasized, in a market economy those relationships were governed by self-interest instead of benevolence. In the antebellum North, most Christians were living in this complex market-capitalist structure for the first time. Given their commitment to religious priorities and prescriptions, how were they supposed to make their way in this new interdependent national and international economic system? What were the possibilities and responsibilities, the personal benefits and burdens of this new world? Where was the order to balance out the freedom that antebellum Northerners enjoyed in the wide-open world of laissez-faire economics? Apparently much was permissible in America’s developing and nearly boundless commercial society, but not everything was edifying. The general question about the modern relationship of religious beliefs and economic behavior, of course, has been addressed before, most prominently by Max Weber, who puzzled over the connection in his famous essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. While Weber dealt with the Protestant ethic (singular) and the spirit of capitalism, this study treats Protestant ethics (plural) and the structures of capitalism. Thus in this study both the main question and the answers differ from Weber’s. As R. H. Tawney described it, Weber wanted to understand “the psychological conditions which made possible the development of capitalist civilization.”8 Weber, while correctly rejecting as “foolish and doctrinaire” the idea “that capitalism as an economic system is a creation of the Reformation,” claimed to have identified “to what extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative formation and the quantitative expansion of that spirit over the world.”9 In other words, Protestantism created a cultural context in which the capitalist spirit (which Weber generally but with difficulty defined as rationalization, calculation for profit, and balance) and later capitalist structures took full root. Protestantism’s unique contribution to this process was through the doctrine of “calling,” which hallowed the worldly and therefore commercial activity of everyday believers, and through the widespread practice of “worldly asceticism” in the pursuit of that calling. For Weber the most important points of connection between the Protestant ethic and the capitalist spirit were in the specifics of worldly asceticism: self-denial, delayed gratification, industry, frugality, and sobriety. Capitalism and Protestantism encouraged those personal virtues by claiming that they would be rewarded both in this life and the next. But instead of investigating how early modern Protestants unintentionally created a capitalist-friendly historical context with their theology of

self and society in an american modernity

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calling, this book investigates American Protestants who after 1815 confronted an economic world not entirely of their own making. This study therefore seeks to understand the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism—sometimes amicable, sometimes hostile, and sometimes confusingly in-between—when the ethos of capitalism began to materialize into institutions and structures. After 1815 there was capitalist rationalization not only in spirit but also in thought, word, and deed—a rationalization that manifested itself not just in accounting books and a few joint-stock companies, but across the American landscape and in the daily routines of working people. Weber described this capitalist economy—as opposed to the mere spirit of capitalism—as an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action.10

This was the world which most Northerners did not personally create, but to which they increasingly had “to conform” as the antebellum era progressed. This developing structure of market capitalism, which Weber also famously referred to as an “iron cage,”11 was the “unalterable order of things” that the Christians investigated here attempted to understand and ethically navigate. As one of them, Henry A. Boardman, put it in 1853: The machinery of commerce and finance is now so complete, that the mechanism itself is all that appears: the power that moves it is out of sight. You may stand behind the curtain, nay, you may even sit among the audience, and work the ropes and pullies that control the shifting panorama, without seeming to have any more agency in the exhibition than the spectators around you. This is constantly done by men of integrity: it promotes despatch, convenience, and efficiency. But of course, it is very liable to abuse. Unprincipled operators wield it to good purpose. Many a Shylock sits in his quiet office, during business-hours, with his hands upon the lever which is crushing his neighbors’ hearts.12

This quotation both anticipates Weber’s later observations and encapsulates the religious and ethical challenges antebellum Northerners faced as they sought to live within the confines of market capitalism’s “iron cage.” As Boardman believed, the “machinery of commerce and finance” was essentially “complete” in the North by 1853—a situation that had both benefits and burdens. For example, the market mechanism, especially when worked on by “men of integrity,” promoted “despatch, convenience, and

6

introduction

efficiency,” but it also could injure the innocent when its “unprincipled operators” manipulated the gears for their own greedy self-interest. Boardman claimed that the individual was personally accountable for whether he was nobly tending to the machine or selfishly trying to extract wealth from it at the expense of his neighbors; but he also made clear that such people were still more servants of the machine than its masters. Even more perplexing than the individual use or abuse of the new commercial machine, though, were the unwieldy nature of the mechanism itself and the place of human morality within it. To most antebellum Northerners, market capitalism’s structures were invisible, “unalterable,” and ubiquitous; but they also were mysterious and thus somewhat frightening. There was an unsettling loss of individual control not merely in creating the machine, but also in controlling it and even in understanding it. As Boardman had put it: “the power that moves it is out of sight.” Even those presuming to pull the ropes did not “have any more agency . . . than the spectators around you.” The religiously committed faced two main questions, then, as they sought to live within this new commercial mechanism: first, what is the boundary that separates principled from unprincipled economic activity; and second, where is God in this new and powerful machine? Now more narrowly defined, this book is an investigation into the various ways in which antebellum Northern Christians addressed these two central questions. The boundaries of this investigation are relatively straightforward. Chronologically it extends a little beyond the period called “the market revolution.” Historians usually set the market revolution’s beginning in 1815, at the conclusion of the War of 1812, and its end in either 1846 or 1848, depending on whether or not they want to include the Mexican-American War. The focus of this book also begins in 1815, when new military, political, and technological realities made possible the development of a more interconnected domestic American market, but it continues through the 1850s, traditionally the territory of Civil War historians. I include the dozen years after the Mexican-American War in an effort to cover as large a chronological period as possible and thus to get a larger sample of antebellum opinion—stretching back to the time when the nation’s economy began its dramatic transformation, but stopping right before the next war-inspired wave of massive industrial development. Geographically, this study focuses on the modernizing antebellum North and not the slave South. There are three reasons for this. First of all, it is surprising how rarely the topic of slavery came up among these Northern religious thinkers, even in the 1850s. I therefore let the sources speak for

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themselves, and when they are curiously silent on such an important topic— which is most of the time—I choose to be silent as well. Second of all, it is important that the people investigated here were the insiders—the ones experiencing the development of a capitalist civilization firsthand—and not the ones polemically attacking that civilization from the outside as they sought to defend their own. The reason why white Southerners, religious or not, critiqued the development of market capitalism can more easily be reduced to economic self-interest and cultural survival. This study seeks to isolate religion instead of region as a variable and see how people’s transcendent beliefs and commitments made a difference in their thoughts about more worldly affairs. The third and final reason for restricting this study to the North is, frankly, presentist in nature. After 1865 all of America was made more and more in the antebellum North’s image as the economic metamorphosis of that section spread across the rest of the country with the expansion of railroads, banks, and the rule of law, as well as with the nearly unfettered growth of resource-demanding heavy industries. This era can more accurately be described as America’s industrial revolution. The time between 1815 and 1860 is better known as “the market revolution,” and as Charles Sellers, the man who wrote the book on the subject, put it: “Establishing capitalist hegemony over economy, politics and culture, the market revolution created ourselves and most of the world we know.”13 Explicitly, therefore, this study investigates some of the first Americans to experience this modern way of ordering an economy and society; but implicitly it asks if there are any precedents in their thought or patterns in their behavior that have been handed down to later generations, including our own. Whom this book investigates in particular was determined relatively simply, almost mathematically. If I found that an author wrote about both God and mammon in the same document, I read that author’s work. Thanks to the market revolution, the antebellum North had its share of economic theorists and commentators. Thanks to the Second Great Awakening, it also had its share of Protestants, both evangelical and not. I was concerned with when the two overlapped—when these Christians used religious language and reasoning to speak about economic matters in a single document. I therefore excluded those known religious believers who, for whatever reason, apparently checked their religious sensibilities at the door when they wrote on economic subjects. Many antebellum thinkers shared in this type of intellectual-religious schizophrenia, including some of the figures investigated here. Burdened with the increasingly stringent (although sometimes

8

introduction

self-imposed) requirements of the modern fact/value distinction, all of these religious believers struggled to maintain intellectual integrity. Some, however, were more affected than others. Matthew Carey (1760–1839), for example, and his son Henry Charles Carey (1793–1879) were both well-known political economists and devout Irish Catholics. Their numerous writings on political economy, however, are technical and not theological in any discernable way. Therefore, even though these sources come from individuals whose minds and hearts were shaped by faith, because of the omissions in their economic writings, they were not included in this investigation. But many religious believers in the antebellum North did not separate faith from economic theorizing. In some cases this Christianized economic discourse was found in formal textbooks, like Francis Wayland’s Elements of Political Economy. Other times it was in published sermons on the benefits and burdens of worldly wealth, or in whole books and articles devoted to the subject, like Henry A. Boardman’s The Bible in the Counting House. There was also the occasional running controversy, usually sparked by radical religious challenges to the emerging economic order, like Orestes Brownson’s “The Laboring Classes” and Stephen Colwell’s New Themes for the Protestant Clergy. Thus there is a diffuse but rich and varied body of sources on this subject. Those who combined Christian faith and economic theorizing, however, were not entirely consistent thinkers. Their ideas were often confusing, confused, and even contradictory, not only among the different writers (which one would expect), but sometimes even within a single individual’s economic musings. One of the principle tasks of this book, therefore, is simply to disentangle these complicated ideas and to identify order in thoughts that were occasionally systematic, but more often highly discursive. What ultimately emerged from the sources were three distinct consensuses that came from three identifiable, although loosely bound, communities of Christian economic thinkers. These three groups are referred to here as the clerical economists, the contrarians, and the pastoral moralists. These thinkers are placed into these groups because, whether consciously or unconsciously, they shared a similar religious vocabulary and an identifiable set of ethical priorities that were internally consistent and externally distinct from the other two groups. Each of the three main sections of the book explores in turn each group’s thoughts about the relationship of Christianity and emerging market capitalism. Part I, “Assured,” investigates the clerical economists, a group of influential Protestant academics who enthusiastically welcomed economic modernization and unequivocally championed its so-called science of political

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economy. The main question of part I is why were these religiously devout people so attracted to this new economic science in the first place? Political economy, especially in the writings of its British founders—Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus—was in no way an overtly religious discipline. On the contrary, it was highly questionable from a religious point of view, especially in its deductive methodology and its often amoral priorities and prescriptions. If the precepts of political economy led to conclusions that were inconsistent with Christian theology and morality, how could the clerical economists justify spreading the science and encouraging people to make decisions, both personal decisions and sometimes national policy decisions, based on its teachings? Before becoming what John McVickar called “the redeeming science of modern times,”14 political economy first had to be a redeemed science, and before 1815 it was a science very much in need of redemption. Part I first lays out the problems—including what was later known as das Adam Smith Problem—that the clerical economists faced and then details their complicated and internally consistent, although incomplete, solutions. Ultimately, the clerical economists had no doubt that the development of market capitalism and its science were the latest and greatest revelations of a good God to a needy people, but in making their case they had to leave at least two major questions unanswered: the problem of individual morality within a market-capitalist mechanism and the problem of the poor. Part II, “Unresolved Questions,” highlights these intellectual loose ends within the clerical economists’ seemingly airtight cosmology and sets up the next two sections on the contrarians and the pastoral moralists—the people who did pick up these questions and dared to answer them. Not all American Christians during the antebellum era welcomed the new economic order and its science; and Part III, “Opposed,” investigates those people and their ideas. This section discusses in particular two of the most vocal Christian economic contrarians: Stephen Colwell and Orestes Brownson. These two men were on a different side of the economic discussion precisely because they did not share in either the intellectual tradition or the nationalist optimism of the clerical economists. They definitely had their European intellectual influences, but they were students more of Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and the Luddites than they were of Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and Thomas Chalmers. They also differed from their more sanguine brethren in what they thought about the future of America. Whereas the clerical economists were optimistic, westward-looking, and nationally focused, these religious enemies of political economy were pessimistic, looked east to the economic turmoil of industrializing Europe, and

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introduction

focused more on the growing plight of America’s cities than the promises of manifest destiny. In short, they feared that if Americans sowed the same economic seeds as Britons (industrialization, free trade, and an even greater division of labor), they would reap the same inheritance—a miserable working class and the revolutionary tensions that come with increased inequality. Part IV, “Adapted,” is devoted to untangling the especially complicated ideas of the pastoral moralists. This group of ministers and social commentators did not form a self-conscious community like the clerical economists did. Instead they were only occasional writers on economic matters, moved by particular events at particular times to publish their thoughts about the current economic state of affairs. Their starting point was not, therefore, the emergence of a new academic discipline and whether it was suitably Christian, but rather was the practical and day-to-day workings of the economy and the moral dilemmas that it created for the Christian faithful. As a result, their writings were much more personal and devotional, concerned more with the “how then shall we live?” questions than the big picture of global free trade or the effects of market capitalism on the working class. They were also more concerned with the virtue of the emerging middle class and how it might be corrupted by the competitive demands of a market economy. From a political perspective, this was the Achilles heel of American economic modernization: a developing economy contributed to national strength, but the republic ultimately rested on the “virtue and intelligence” of its citizens. As market capitalism developed, those citizens might become more efficient economic producers, but were they losing their souls in the process? Such a prospect was both religiously problematic and nationally perilous. What the pastoral moralists ventured to do, therefore—sometimes for the sake of religious duty (the notion of what was right and wrong categorically) and sometimes for the pragmatic sake of national stability—was to try to establish limits and boundaries for acceptable behavior and to draw black-and-white distinctions in the exceedingly gray area of commercial interactions. Ethical ambiguity, in fact, is an abiding and appropriate theme throughout this book. To generalize for a moment, the Christian religion—for better or for worse—does not lend itself to single ethical stances on most issues. This was just as true for the emerging Christian economic ethics of the antebellum era as it was for Christian opinions about racial slavery at the same time. Unsurprisingly, people on either side of an issue could quote from the same Bible to defend their positions—positions that came from both their commitments to transcendent religious dogmas and from their particular

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historical contexts. Emphasizing context, however, does not mean that people’s religious commitments were shallow and that modern historical interpreters are on firmer ground when they opt for the cynical view that religious language was little more than a dressing up or rationalization of material interests. Instead, it is argued here that these religious commitments were deeply and genuinely held, but at the same time were powerfully influenced by the ethical commitments and priorities that best fit what will be called that individual’s social “character.”15 In particular it is argued that the three main “Christian” responses to the development of market capitalism fell along the lines of the three main ethical traditions of Western philosophy: utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. What antebellum Christians thought about market capitalism depended a great deal on which of these three traditions they inhabited; and which of these traditions they inhabited depended largely on their self-appointed social “characters.” One of this project’s most important conclusions is that no one investigated here had all of the answers. No single thinker or group of thinkers was capable of developing a comprehensive ethical framework with which to evaluate the entire market-capitalist system. Something was always excluded, and some ethical question always went unresolved. The contrarians, for example, developed well-reasoned and intellectually consistent arguments against the emerging status quo; they did not, however, propose any viable macroeconomic alternatives to replace it. The clerical economists constructed equally sophisticated theological arguments in favor of Adam Smith’s glorious mechanism of global free trade; but in their writings as economists they never dared to touch questions about the morality of individual commercial interactions. The pastoral moralists, on the other hand, did address such questions; but they also intentionally sidestepped certain issues that they knew were too big or foundational to tackle. They might have talked about the right way and wrong way to go about a financial transaction, for example, but they always shied away from judging the entire economic system of which that financial transaction was a part. Thus the pastoral moralists admonished against individual speculating, but they were silent about whether or not widespread speculation was in fact essential to the workings of market capitalism. In the final analysis, each of these three groups was capable of addressing only part of a much larger whole. They all thought big, in other words, but none of them could think big enough. When it came to reconciling their Christian faith with the complex realities of a developing market-capitalist society, the thinkers investigated here had to make intellectual and ethical compromises. Much of what follows

12

introduction

is a detailing of those compromises as these religious groups situated themselves within one ethical tradition (either utilitarianism, deontology, or virtue ethics), while neglecting the other two. It is worth pointing out, however, that while each of these three groups drew, perhaps unconsciously, from different ethical traditions as they thought about the developing market-capitalist economy, all of them explicitly articulated their conclusions in the name of Christianity. These divergent ethical traditions led not only to their divergent responses to market capitalism (love, hate, and ambiguity), but to divergent emphases within the Christian tradition. The clerical economists, for example, spoke about God the lawgiver and providential provider for human welfare; the contrarians spoke of Jesus the radical social critic and minister to the poor; and the pastoral moralists spoke of the command that Christians love their neighbors as themselves. There was thus a legitimate “Christian” rationale for championing market capitalism, attacking it, or adapting it. Everyone, however, was hoping to address the same two very big questions: how was one to love God (or perhaps still see God) and love one’s neighbor within the structures of modern market capitalism? The details of those structures were decidedly less important to these theorists. Consequently, readers who are hoping to gain insight into Christian opinions about the Bank of the United States, the Erie Canal, steam power, or Andrew Jackson’s Specie Circular are liable to be disappointed. As with the subject of slavery, these writers almost never commented on them. Instead, what comes up are these larger issues of self and society in modernity. It mattered that these historical figures were living in a new world of canals and steam power and an often-divisive national economic policy, but more importantly they wanted to know where God was in all of these developments and how they should live in light of them. To better understand the problem of self and society in modernity, I have turned to some of that problem’s most insightful students: the philosophers Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre. Engaging with these two theorists from another discipline is not meant to blur genres within a single book. They are ethicists, and this is a work of history. They construct normative arguments, while this work, although addressing ethical issues, does not presume to speak normatively. But understanding the nature of the modern self and modern society is not the exclusive purview of intellectual historians, and the work of these theorists from another field is simply too valuable to ignore. Methodologically, this is a work of antebellum intellectual history, following most closely the work of Daniel Walker Howe. But as Howe himself puts it in the introduction to his Making the American Self:

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Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln: “The theorist of the self whom I have found the most relevant and rewarding for my own work is the philosopher Charles Taylor. The account given in this book may even be conceived as taking place within a corner, so to speak, of his large volume on Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.”16 Howe recognizes that no one understands the confused nature of the modern self better than Taylor. Accordingly, he situates his historical project within Taylor’s more strictly philosophical one. Following Howe’s lead, this book seeks to do the same, although the specific “corner” of Taylor’s work that is explored is even smaller. To be sure, in adopting this methodology and pursuing this argument, there are both risks and rewards. It is therefore worthwhile, before proceeding, to explain both the interpretive tradition in which this project is situated and the goals that I hope will be achieved by furthering that tradition. This book is intended to be the continuation of a conversation, but obviously it is not a conversation with the usual scholarly suspects. In an investigation of how antebellum Christians thought about and interacted with their changing economic world, one might expect to focus on that economic, and perhaps political, context. These, after all, were the new social realities that spurred some religious believers to respond in print; and so it stands to reason that what they thought about the expanding structures of market capitalism would depend most on either how enmeshed or alienated they were from those structures. Although the scholarship on antebellum God and mammon is surprisingly thin, this is the way American historians have told the story for over half a century. Unsurprisingly, the Christians who materially benefited from the development of market capitalism (the upper and middle classes) articulated a religious sanctioning for that development, while those Christians who suffered because of the new economy (the emerging working class) used a religious rationale to condemn it. Starting with Henry May’s 1949 classic Protestant Churches and Industrial America, this tradition of interpretation has coursed its way through the “social control” school of the 1960s and 1970s and into the more recent work of historians of the market revolution, such as Sean Wilentz, Paul Johnson, R. Lawrence Moore, and Charles Sellers.17 This book, however, seeks to consider antebellum God and mammon from a different perspective, recasting the subject as a socio-intellectual problem rather than a socioeconomic one, and hopefully revealing a much more complicated, interesting, and accurate picture of what was going on in the minds of antebellum Christians as they thought about themselves, their God, and their developing American economy.

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It is a given among historians—even intellectual historians—that no thinker stands alone, divorced from all social contexts and outside influences. Instead, historical actors are always intractably embedded within social settings that provide them with a lens through which they see the world and a vocabulary with which they describe it. In the analysis here, while still insisting on the importance of social context, there is a shift from the somewhat expected contexts of social class, religious denomination, or political affiliation to the broader (but less easily identifiable) contexts of what Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre variously refer to as “frameworks,” “horizons,” “traditional boundaries,” or even “the background picture,”18 which they claim are inescapable for all historical actors. These “‘frameworks,’” as Taylor describes them, expose the “background assumptions to our moral reactions” and provide “the contexts in which these reactions have sense.” They are also, he continues, “not an optional extra, something we might just as well do without, but [provide] a kind of orientation essential to our identity.”19 The problem, though, is that these “horizons” can be so far in the distance, or “the background picture” so far removed from the more exciting and immediate setting, that individuals—including both historical actors and historians—forget that they exist. When it comes to this subject, for example, given the near invisibility of these “horizons,” as opposed to the hypervisibility of tumultuous antebellum party politics and the explosive growth of denominations during the Second Great Awakening, it is understandable to doubt whether they existed or influenced at all. Such skepticism is also reasonable because the historical actors investigated here were not always conscious of any tradition’s influence on their thought, and in some cases would even have vehemently denied its influence. In other words, none of these antebellum thinkers declared himself a deontologist or a virtue ethicist with views of capitalism that flowed from that philosophical source. Yet when it comes to ultimate questions about the self’s place in the cosmos or the ethical questions about the self’s place among other selves in a changing society, these are the very contexts—nearly invisible though they may be—that matter most. Thus, what Taylor wants “to bring out and examine is the richer background languages in which we set the basis and point of the moral obligations we acknowledge.” But as he goes on to explain, identifying and articulating “the background we assume and draw on in any claim to rightness” can be both “very difficult and controversial,” and “may even be resisted . . . because there may be—and I want to argue, frequently is—a lack of fit between what people as it were officially and consciously believe, even pride themselves on believing, on one hand, and what they need to make sense of some of their moral reactions, on the other.”20

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The same goals and challenges are true for this book, even if the subject is the ethical discourse of the early nineteenth century and not Taylor’s late twentieth. It explores the “richer background languages” that informed antebellum Christians as they responded in print to developing market capitalism, and it continues with this exploration even when the historical actors might have resisted it, as the clerical economists did whenever they were labeled “utilitarians.” Whether they wanted to acknowledge it or not, this was precisely the ethical tradition the clerical economists drew on when they needed, as Taylor puts it, “to make sense of some of their moral reactions.”21 Similarly, deontology was the unacknowledged ethical tradition of the contrarians, and virtue ethics the tradition of the pastoral moralists. The individual thinkers in these groups were not intellectually sovereign choosers, carefully studying the variety of ethical traditions, discerning which one of the three most resonated with them personally, and then deciding to speak on behalf of one of them while excluding the others. Instead, they were deeply embedded in these traditions because of their varying social “characters.” As Alasdair MacIntyre puts it succinctly: “Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies.” “They are,” he explains, “the moral representatives of their culture and they are so because of the way in which moral and metaphysical ideas and theories assume through them an embodied existence in the social world.”22 Each of the three groups investigated here—the clerical economists, the contrarians, and the pastoral moralists—constituted a distinct “character” in antebellum Northern society and “embodied” its corresponding moral philosophy. As educators in the new American republic, the clerical economists were the self-appointed keepers of national order and thus preoccupied with the utilitarian greatest good for the greatest number. As aggrieved outsiders, the contrarians were the self-appointed social gadflies, judging their modernizing brethren with the rigid standards of a biblical deontology. And as the shepherds of their flocks, the pastoral moralists were the self-appointed guardians of the Christian and republican tradition of virtue ethics. “A moral philosophy,” MacIntyre asserts, “presupposes a sociology.”23 And although one would presume that he would deal with pure abstractions because he is a philosopher, he instead devotes considerable attention to the social contexts that define “characters” and their corresponding moral philosophies. As he explains: What is specific to each culture is in large and central part what is specific to its stock of characters. So the culture of Victorian England was partially defined by

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introduction

the characters of the Public School Headmaster, the Explorer and the Engineer; and that of Wilhelmite Germany was similarly defined by such characters as those of the Prussian Officer, the Professor and the Social Democrat.24

The culture of the antebellum North was likewise defined by “its stock of characters”: the Christian educator, the vocal religious outsider, and the local clergyman. A “character,” in other words, is a position of both cultural and moral authority. It is the historically specific culture that creates the position and imbues it with authority in the first place, but that also limits the individual who plays that “character” in his ethical language and outlook. If an individual were to “break character,” so to speak, and begin articulating ethical stances that were inconsistent with that culturally defined position, he would cease to be that “character.” This was precisely the case with Orestes Brownson and Francis Wayland, two of the central figures investigated here. As for Brownson, in the first half of his life he journeyed from Presbyterian orthodoxy, to atheistic freethinking, to universalism, back to radical freethinking, then to unitarianism, and was even dabbling in transcendentalism before his final and lasting conversion to the Roman Catholic Church. In all of these spiritual changes of heart, however, Brownson never changed “characters,” only religious affiliations. The culturally constructed and personally adopted “character” of Brownson remained that of an outsider and a contrarian. In that “character” he could articulate any radical and logically extreme idea that he fancied—including a Christian critique of market capitalism. And when his ideas began to conflict with his adopted religious community—which they often did obviously—he merely changed communities, leaving one denomination, for example, and joining another. But his “character” as an outsider remained the same, at least until 1840 when he experienced a major crisis in his life that shook him to his foundations. That painful and lasting transformation fundamentally altered Brownson’s ethical understanding of self and society, and as a result he could no longer inhabit the “character” of the vocal American outsider, radically adhering to a biblical deontology regardless of the social consequences. And as part of this process, Brownson no longer possessed either the vocabulary or the vision to critique the market-capitalist world that he had previously despised. But the most important point is that the change in “character” came first, with his thoughts about market capitalism naturally following. As for Francis Wayland, readers might find it confusing that in part I he is the leading clerical economist, but that he also returns in part IV as

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a pastoral moralist. The very good and very telling reason for this is best explained with reference to these discrete antebellum “characters” and their equally discrete ethical vocabularies. Unlike Brownson, who in spite of his apparent fickleness only changed “characters” and moral philosophies once in his life, Wayland suffered throughout his life from what could be called an epistemological and ethical schizophrenia. Whereas for Brownson there was a difference between the young man and the man after 1840—and thus two chapters devoted to describing this process of personal transformation from one “character” to the other—for Wayland it was always the social context that determined which “character” he would play and which ethical language he would speak. At the very beginning of his best-selling textbook on political economy, for example, he declared that he would not “intermingle them [ethical and economic matters], but has argued economical questions on merely economical grounds.”25 Curiously, and without understanding the full implications of this epistemological schizophrenia, all of the clerical economists used the modern fact/value distinction to excuse themselves from having to address the difficult questions of morality and economic activity. This is why part I on the supposedly “assured” clerical economists is followed by a part II on their “unresolved questions.” But unlike the rest of the clerical economists, who never publicly questioned the goodness of a market-capitalist economy, Wayland also preached the occasional sermon on topics such as “The Perils of Riches.” When speaking as a Baptist minister in the context of the church, he felt both the freedom and the duty to address political economy’s moral dimensions. This is why Wayland shows up again in part IV as a different “character”—in this case, as a pastoral moralist. As mentioned earlier, none of these “characters” had all of the answers. In fact, given the range of issues at hand, none were capable even of asking all the relevant questions. Each thinker wanted to evaluate his developing market-capitalist world using the ethical standards of his Christian faith, but this was precisely the problem—there was not a single, agreed-upon standard of evaluation, but rather multiple standards, and all of them arguably “Christian.” From the perspective of each individual’s social “character,” however, one set of ethical priorities reigned supreme over the others and shaped both that individual’s and that group’s response to the challenges of living ethically within the new market-capitalist economy. For the contrarians, what mattered most were Christ’s unambiguous commands to love and serve the poor. For the pastoral moralists, what mattered most was for individuals to develop a kind of realistic conscience that would allow them to engage in economic competition, but also alert them when they

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introduction

had harmed the neighbor that they were obliged instead to love. And for the clerical economists, what mattered most was securing the greatest good for the greatest number by maintaining intellectual, economic and national order. This first part will demonstrate more clearly what these threats to order were in the antebellum North and the steps the clerical economists took to counter them.

part i “Assured”—The Clerical Economists

a s p r o t e s t a n t educators in antebellum America, the clerical economists unabashedly championed economic modernization as a good and Godordained development in world history. These social theorists were especially enthusiastic about the new “science” of political economy, a discipline that could supposedly explain the process of economic modernization and even predict its positive outcomes. “Political economy,” Francis Wayland wrote succinctly, “is the science of wealth.”1 In every corner of the globe, wealth was being produced, exchanged, distributed, and consumed by both individuals and entire nations. The discipline of political economy emerged in the eighteenth century to bring some intellectual order to this apparent chaos and help explain the so-called laws that governed these complex processes. It was called “political” economy because the subject dealt primarily with how these supposedly universal economic laws worked themselves out in nations and other polities. Sometimes called “public economy,”2 nineteenth-century political economy was also meant to be distinct from the contemporary literature on “domestic economy,” which dealt with more private and day-to-day pecuniary matters.3 Political economy had evolved out of moral philosophy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and was largely an application of that discipline’s general principles to the commercial affairs of the world. In both fields it was simply assumed that there were certain natural laws governing the universe that could be discovered and obeyed by the earnest student of creation. Moral philosophy, however, was concerned with the subjects of conscience, virtue, personal liberty, and natural religion. Political 19

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economy, on the other hand, dealt with the mundane—literally: worldly affairs like capital, labor, banks, taxation, and trade. Shortly after 1815 many prominent antebellum colleges began offering separate courses in political economy, which were to be taken after the more foundational course in moral philosophy, and publishers began printing whole textbooks on the subject.4 After the Civil War the field started dying out when academic institutions began establishing departments in the now more technical discipline of “economics.”5 But during the antebellum era, especially the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, courses in political economy were central to the college curriculum, thanks in large part to the clerical economists. Among the first American professors of political economy, these men wrote some of the most influential texts on the subject, fought to include it in the core curricula of their colleges, and even delivered public lectures on the new science to dispel any misconceptions and prejudices that people might have about it. Apparently, not all Americans were so enamored with the new science, and the clerical economists felt the need to allay their fears. The main objection was a religious one—that political economy never paid attention to morality. In all of its counting and calculating, political economy seemed to care only about how profitable a commercial exchange might be, not how much harm or good it might do. For example, what place did a Christian ethic of neighbor love have in commercial transactions? And if political economy was the so-called science of such transactions, how could it be consistent with this Christian ethic? Some skeptics even wondered about the so-called commercial mechanism that political economy claimed to describe. Was it moral, amoral, or actually immoral? And then there were all the specific questions about the economic relationships that this new machinery fostered: a perceived increase in selfishness and competitiveness among Americans, greater inequality among the various levels of society, and a growing class of urban poor with less adequate means of assistance. Were these merely the natural and understandable growing pains that accompanied an otherwise neutral or even benevolent developing economy—minor glitches in a “scientific” system that was not only efficient but also good? Or were these specific problems indicative of deeper flaws in the very nature and structure of the mechanism itself? For their part, the clerical economists recognized that the Christian community’s skepticism about their discipline was no minor issue. The idea that the science might be amoral at best and anti-religious at worst obviously disturbed the Christian disciples of this new science. If the principles of political economy led to conclusions that were inconsistent with Christian

“assured”—the clerical economists

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theology or morality, how could they subscribe to it and encourage others to do the same? These were the obstacles that the clerical economists had to overcome if they were going to convince their fellow Protestants of the trustworthiness of their discipline and the overall goodness of developing market capitalism.

chapter one

Originally Sinful “Das Adam Smith Problem” and the “Dismal Science”

t h e m o d e r n discipline of political economy originated in Britain at exactly the time of the American Revolution. Adam Smith first published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations on March 9, 1776, only four months before Thomas Jefferson’s equally revolutionary Declaration of Independence. Overturning more than a mere imperial government though, Smith’s text subverted all previous notions about the structuring of human societies and recommended something radically different in their place. It also initiated an intellectual revolution and began a whole new discipline or social “science.” In 1775, a year before Smith published his Inquiry, only a small clique of the intellectual elite had ever heard of political economy. By 1825 all types of people from academics to common merchants were praising Smith’s political economy as the perfect modern science for modern times.6 In addition to revolutionizing traditional understandings of human societies, though, Smith also subtly but most definitely challenged traditional religious cosmologies. In fact, economic historians have argued that the birth of political economy depended on the previous decline of religious authority and the establishment of an alternative intellectual tradition that made “the relation of man to man, instead of the relations of man with God, the foundation of social inquiry.”7 This shift in intellectual life from the vertical to the horizontal had begun centuries earlier, but Adam Smith was the first to take this perspective into the realm of economics, an enlightenment venture that was as promising as it was dangerous, both for nations and for the religiously committed. 23

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One could argue in fact that the ascent of political economy in the halfcentury from 1775 to 1825 was the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment. Adam Smith wrote near the end of the Enlightenment, in the wake of Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke. His revolution in the field of economics therefore came after and could not have occurred without the more fundamental revolutions in experimental science and political philosophy that these men brought about. But if Smith’s ideas were not as foundational to the Enlightenment project, his work did represent—like that of Immanuel Kant in philosophy—a culmination and synthesis of Enlightenment ideas and the beginning of something definitively modern. In his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Smith resolved a crucial tension that had confounded social theorists for over a century. “At the risk of gross oversimplification,” David Brion Davis writes, “it can be said that the Enlightenment was torn between the ideal of the autonomous individual and the ideal of a rational and efficient social order.”8 Abandoning almost all of the seemingly quixotic goals of humanist traditions (which made Smith highly problematic both to Christian moralists and to classical republicans), Smith harmonized these two Enlightenment ideals. In his optimistic yet practicable vision of a commercial society, individuals, driven by their personal interests and even passions but mysteriously guided by the “invisible hand,” ended up working for the good of the whole.9 Whether Smith’s system actually accomplished either of these goals and whether the creation of the system did more harm than good have been questions ever since. Did market capitalism truly create “a rational and efficient social order,” as David Brion Davis describes it, while also allowing for the autonomy of individuals? Or was the advent of market capitalism a negative development for both individuals and for the larger society? In the middle of America’s market revolution, these were some of the questions that the clerical economists were trying to answer. In Britain, although the Industrial Revolution would not begin until the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War in 1783, seven years after the publication of Wealth of Nations,10 the economy and society of Smith’s time had already experienced a massive market revolution of its own. The British economy, and especially that of Scotland, had changed dramatically over the course of the eighteenth century. The Union of 1707 brought Scotland into the ultra-lucrative British colonial trade and created financial as well as political ties with England where there had been few before. The Union also lay the groundwork for a more developed Scottish commercial society that gained strength as the eighteenth century progressed.11

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By the 1760s, this revolutionary new market economy—called by one historian “the largest free-trade area in the world in the eighteenth century”12 — needed to be explained. In 1776, Adam Smith finally imposed some intellectual order on this chaotic commercial world. French political economists like Franc¸ois Quesnay and the Physiocrats had written before Smith and undoubtedly influenced his thought, but Smith’s truly pathbreaking study began the modern discipline of political economy and dominated the young field for at least its first hundred years.13 Smith’s legacy during the first fifty of those years, however, was mixed. Initially, Wealth of Nations met with enormous success, selling out its first edition in only six months and going through four more editions, as well as numerous translations, before Smith’s death in 1790.14 But during his lifetime, Smith did not inspire many professional imitators. In the eighteenth century only he would have qualified for the title “political economist,” and until 1815 he would have shared the designation only with Thomas Malthus. In the next five years, David Ricardo, Robert Torrens, and J. R. McCulloch were added to their number, but after 1820, as historian Gary Langer writes, “the list explodes.”15 Of these new professionals, David Ricardo was by far the most influential, both intellectually and politically. More so than Thomas Malthus, with whom he debated, David Ricardo elaborated on the doctrines and definitions he had inherited from Smith and turned them into what became the reigning economic orthodoxy of the nineteenth century, especially in his theories of rent, wages, and value.16 Ricardo also enjoyed a respected career as a member of the House of Commons, speaking regularly on economic matters from 1819 until his untimely death in 1823; and unlike Smith, he did inspire numerous students, J. R. McCulloch the most notable and devoted among them.17 The ideas of the political economists, however, did not remain the purview of a specialized elite. On a more popular level, after 1815 political economy was regularly spoken of as “the fashion” or “the rage” in large part because it claimed to offer solutions to the growing problems of industrialization, and it did so with the language and legitimacy of a science. The ideas of the political economists, in other words, fit the times both in content and in form. In the early nineteenth century, science was a fad and political economy a particularly popular fad because it was concerned with more everyday affairs—matters that directly affected people’s pocketbooks instead of the seemingly irrelevant obscurities of the physical sciences or philosophy. Growing numbers of people listened to the political economists because they spoke about issues that were of great concern to most everyone

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at the time, and they could do so with the authority of a science and in the name of the greatest good for the greatest number. Much, of course, had changed in the almost fifty years between Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Ricardo’s death that had caused the discipline to go from relative obscurity to widespread popularity—namely, the Industrial Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. To say the least, this was an era when conservatism reigned in Great Britain. Had political economists appeared at all subversive during this time of reaction to the French Revolution, or somehow been appropriated by radical rather than conservative interests, they would have enjoyed about as much success in spreading their ideas as the communitarian Robert Owen did in spreading his.18 There is a tremendous irony in this conservative co-optation of political economy, though, because the whole discipline started out so very radical. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith attacked almost everything that could be called status quo for his time. Most famously he attacked the dominant economic theory of mercantilism, but he also expressed harsh opinions about the political leaders of his day and the very idea of the British Empire. He opposed slavery, and—perhaps most surprising to modern readers—he criticized the growing class of capitalists and had tremendous sympathy for the working poor.19 But once British leaders recognized political economy’s conservative elements, most notably its compatibility with the ideology of liberalism (equality before the law, the protection of private property, and the right of individuals to freedom of expression and religious faith), the discipline began to gain support in spite of some of its radical policy implications.20 Many questions still remained, however, about political economy’s compatibility with Christianity. These questions seem to fall into two separate but related categories: Smith’s own religious beliefs, and the morality of the economic system that he championed. On the first question there is near unanimity of opinion from both modern scholars and from Smith’s historical contemporaries.21 John McVickar, one of the American clerical economists, called Smith “an infidel” whose new science of “Political Economy naturally set out with opposition to religious institutions.”22 And as one historian puts it pointedly: “Smith is certainly no conventional Christian—he says nothing that would support the doctrine of a Trinity, he says in a famous letter that David Hume faced death better than ‘any whining Christian,’ and he struck the one passage indirectly referring to Christ from the last edition of [The Theory of Moral Sentiments].”23 His first edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759, by contrast, “is fairly full of references to a

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deity of a Christian sort.”24 But as another scholar speculates, Smith’s earlier buttressing of religious and political orthodoxies was most likely the result of “the slightly fussy moral didacticism perhaps incumbent on a young Scots Professor of Moral Philosophy.”25 In other words, the young Smith either believed in theism because it saturated his field of study, or, if he did not believe, the insecurity of his professional status made him unwilling to express a controversial opinion that would have cost him his academic position. By the end of his life, however, although he was never an explicit enemy of Christian faith, Smith had become decidedly more skeptical and less afraid of expressing his skepticism. Over the course of his life, Smith was suspected of unbelief in part due to his long-standing friendship with David Hume, an overt enemy of Christianity. According to many scholars, these suspicions were not far from the truth. Their friendship was so close, in fact, and their religious beliefs so similar that on his deathbed, as Emma Rothschild writes, “Hume entrusted to Smith the posthumous publication of his most profoundly skeptical work, the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and Smith had earlier entrusted to Hume the posthumous publication of his ‘History of Astronomy,’ which was also relatively subversive.”26 As for their opinions, both men rejected the credibility of miracles, including the resurrection, and both scorned the whole fields of revealed and natural theology.27 The main difference is that Hume published his skeptical attacks and thus heaped public scorn on himself, and Smith did not. But how did Smith’s religious skepticism manifest itself in The Wealth of Nations? To answer this question, it is best to think of Smith in the way that historian John Dunn thinks of him: as “‘a practical atheist’: someone for whom, if God does exist, at least his existence makes no practical difference to the sane conduct of human life.” In other words, while Smith did not attack theism outright in The Wealth of Nations, his theories about the workings of the economy neither made reference to a divine creator or judge, nor did they require a divine sustainer for society’s ongoing operation.28 Both Smith and Hume maintained that all of life could be explained naturalistically.29 Even Smith’s famous image of the “invisible hand,” which might hint at a faith in some kind of cosmic guiding force, one scholar believes “is best interpreted as a mildly ironic joke.”30 Simply put, for Smith the existence of order did not presuppose the existence of design, much less a designer, and thus the irony of describing the hand as “invisible.” If Smith had intended it to be “God’s hand” or a “divine hand,” he would have said so. As he put it instead, one can make the connection that for Smith the global

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economic mechanism needed a divine invisible hand about as much as a single nation’s economy needed the visible hand of government interference. Both individuals and whole societies could flourish, Smith believed, apart from the direction of both gods and governors. And the happy fact that economies did flourish when left to their own operation, Smith concluded, was exactly that—a fortunate reality of nature, but not itself evidence of a divine creator.31 As believers in natural order apart from a divine orderer, both Smith and Hume made a radical break with their esteemed predecessors in natural philosophy. For example, they opposed outright Newton’s faith that “the principles of motion could be deduced from nature, because they had been placed in nature by God,”32 as well as Locke’s belief that “the duty of mankind, as God’s creatures, [was] to obey their divine creator.”33 All four thinkers (Smith, Hume, Newton, and Locke) had wanted to discover some kind of order in the inscrutable workings of the world, but perhaps only Newton had succeeded because he dealt with inert matter and not people. Locke spent much of his forty-year career defending theocentrism in both epistemology and politics, only to be succeeded by Smith and Hume, who jettisoned such religious commitments—sometimes gleefully, sometimes mournfully. Hume, for example, hated the religious idea of eternal punishment and was glad to see it go, along with the other so-called superstitions of the Christian faith. Smith, on the other hand, was more ambivalent about the loss of a divine orderer and judge. Sounding very much like Friedrich Nietzsche, who in some ways feared the death of God as much as he celebrated it, Smith looked with horror at the prospect of “a fatherless world . . . the thought that all the unknown regions of the infinite and incomprehensible space may be filled with nothing but endless misery and wretchedness.”34 These are not the words of a happy atheist with a positive view of the natural world. In fact, Smith added these words to a later edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, even as he was making that work less explicitly Christian. As he became more skeptical, in other words, he also became more sympathetic to the psychological dilemma of the skeptic. When it came to the questionable morality of Smith’s economic system, the central problem (which later German scholars simply called das Adam Smith Problem) was that Smith had written two influential books and not one. The difficulty was in harmonizing The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which emphasized human beings’ sympathy for other human beings, with The Wealth of Nations, which presumed human beings’ overriding tendency to

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act according to self-interest. Another way of stating the problem is simply to ask where is morality in The Wealth of Nations, or what kind of morality did it presuppose and possibly sanction? What follows in the rest of this section is a detailing of how the clerical economists responded to precisely these questions. The answers to the questions posed by das Adam Smith Problem are various and all too often depend on whether the answerer was (or is) a fan of market capitalism.35 Those who admire Smith and the world that he helped create insist that there never was any das Adam Smith Problem in the first place. Political economy, they argue, simply is moral philosophy and reflects, even if “invisibly,” the values and assumptions of this earlier discipline from which it emerged.36 Smith’s ideological opponents, however, insist that Smith did separate political economy from moral philosophy as a discrete field of study, thus divorcing ethics from economics and implicitly sanctioning an amoral commercial realm where anything goes. But ideological commitments aside, the general scholarly consensus is that there is an “Adam Smith problem” and that its solutions are rather elusive. For instance, even one scholar who insists that The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations are “parts of a [single] grand system,” nevertheless confesses that the two books “are not tightly linked,” and, after much labor to harmonize the competing principles of the books, concludes that “the Adam Smith problem will always remain, or rather it can be only partially resolved.”37 Another scholar who works even harder to harmonize the two books into one ethical synthesis likewise confesses that “while it is unlikely that one will find an inherent contradiction, it is not inconceivable that Smith had not fully considered the implications of his observations in the [Wealth of Nations].”38 Thus from the eighteenth century to the twentyfirst, even the most strenuous efforts to find unity in Smith’s two works ultimately fall short. Whether this “problem” was by design on Smith’s part or simply an oversight is open to debate. But what is certain is that “there is a problem worth addressing,”39 a problem that has been a burden to all those after Smith who long for integrity between the ethical and the economical.40 For this section on the nineteenth-century clerical economists, the first Christian disciples of Adam Smith in America, there are three relevant subproblems. The first is that Smith was either silent about morality in The Wealth of Nations or spoke only implicitly about virtues that he considered to be inferior to the virtues he had championed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. For instance, Smith included no warnings about the passions of avarice and ambition, passions that had concerned ethicists as far back as

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Aristotle because of their destructive effects on a society.41 But Smith said nothing about these passions whatsoever—a silence that only supports E. P. Thompson’s criticism that the new science of political economy “entailed a de-moralising of the theory of trade and consumption.”42 And if Smith did speak of virtues in The Wealth of Nations, most scholars agree, he at best prioritized the inferior virtue of prudence (“one’s dealing with one’s own affairs”) over the virtue of sympathy (“the tendency to try to feel as others would, had one been in their position”).43 Thus contemporary scholars of das Adam Smith Problem argue that Smith possibly avoided a thorough “demoralising” of political economy, but he did so by proclaiming prudence a virtue in and of itself, although an inferior virtue, a point that leads to the next two subproblems. The second subproblem is that whenever modern scholars attempt to solve das Adam Smith Problem and harmonize sympathy and self-interest, they always focus on The Theory of Moral Sentiments and not The Wealth of Nations. After much searching, they claim to have found in the earlier book a moral sanctioning of self-interest in the virtue of prudence. Smith’s attention to prudence in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in their opinion, establishes the “ethical framework” in which The Wealth of Nations ought to be read.44 But if these scholars find self-interest in the prudence of Smith’s earlier book, none of them claim to find sympathy in his later one. Apparently The Theory of Moral Sentiments left open the door to legitimizing a commercial society based on self-interest, the chief operating principle of the later book. But in The Wealth of Nations, where Smith did legitimize this commercial society, he says nothing about sympathy, the chief operating principle of the earlier book. Thus the contemporary attempt to remoralize the political economy that Smith had apparently demoralized is a one-way street. Smith left it to his students to read his later book in light of his earlier one, but not vice versa. In The Wealth of Nations he did not elaborate on the earlier themes of sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments when he easily could have. Instead he abandoned them, continuing only the thin ethical thread of prudence—a thread that only the most diligent modern student of both books can find to link the two. This leads to the third subproblem and takes us back to the nineteenthcentury clerical economists. The problem is very simple. Although they too were serious students of Adam Smith, the clerical economists almost never referenced The Theory of Moral Sentiments in their understandings of what ethical commercial activity was supposed to be, but instead took The Wealth of Nations entirely on its own. Even though they were moral philosophers

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like Smith himself, they regarded The Wealth of Nations as the founding text of their science and not as something that was organically, although weakly, connected to Smith’s earlier project on sympathy. They were therefore similarly burdened with das Adam Smith Problem but could not even come to the “partial resolution”45 that some modern scholars have reached because they did not read Smith in the modern way. They confronted the same challenge of integrating their economics and their ethics (and for them it was an ethics grounded in Christian faith), and they did come to some “partial resolutions,” but these resolutions were independent of a close reading of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Instead they solved the problems of integrating ethics and economics with strategies and answers that more comfortably fit the historical context of their antebellum North. But before describing those strategies, there were other burdens that Christian political economists had to shoulder—burdens that had more to do with Smith’s successors than with Smith himself. Smith, after all, lived and wrote before the Industrial Revolution hit full stride. Most important, given the relatively primitive division of labor at the time he published Wealth of Nations—think of his quaint pin manufactory of 1776 compared to William Blake’s “dark Satanic Mills” of 180446 —Britain was not reaping any widespread negative consequences from industrialization. Smith had warned about the possible dehumanization of the common worker that the division of labor might bring,47 but his successors had to live with the reality of that dehumanized working class. To put it bluntly, after Smith the discipline of political economy took a dark turn with the infamous and objectionable doctrines of David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. For his part, Smith might have been religiously and morally questionable, but at least he was optimistic about nature’s balanced and benevolent economic mechanism. Nature was ordered and generally good even if it did not have a divine orderer. For their part, both Malthus and Ricardo believed that the economic mechanism was rather malevolent and that it would one day stall, injuring certain classes along the way and ultimately harming all connected with it. Thus, while still believing in the order of the economic mechanism, they challenged its fundamental goodness, which led some to challenge the goodness of its divine designer. Malthus and Ricardo came to such pessimistic conclusions because both feared what would happen as Britain’s population grew while its arable land was slowly exhausted. Out of these anxieties, Ricardo formulated his theory of rent and his “iron law of wages” in his 1817 magnum opus, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. This law stated that the price of labor was

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subject to the forces of supply and demand, but would tend toward a mean, or natural wage. The aggregate wage could also be calculated by dividing what Ricardo called the “wages fund” (money designated by capitalists for labor costs) by the population of the labor force. According to this theory, high wages during an economic boom would encourage population growth, which would increase the size of the labor force. The now-expanded labor force (a larger denominator in Ricardo’s formula) would then drive down wages and discourage population growth, which would cause wages to rise again, and then the process would repeat. This cycle of population ebb and flow, by itself, did not necessarily mean that the national economy would meet a cataclysmic end, but a population that grew and expanded with the rate of wages did mean that wages would generally hover at the subsistence level—an unhappy prediction of a perpetually miserable working class. Even more ominous was the relationship of population and agriculture. According to Ricardo, as the population grew, increasingly inferior land would have to be cultivated to meet the greater demand for food. Owners of the better land could then charge rent for the use of their property that yielded the superior harvests. This rent, Ricardo predicted, would escalate as the increased competition for good land made farmers more willing to pay higher prices. But as the rent rose, so would the price of grain, which would pinch capitalists who had to pay their laborers enough to buy bread. Wages would therefore rise and profits would fall until the economy reached a stationary state. Ricardo thought that encouraging free trade, by repealing the Corn Law for instance, would delay the arrival of this stationary state, but not delay it forever. And even until that day, Ricardo predicted, the working class would be forced to live at or near subsistence levels, their wages generally kept from rising due to either a large labor force or a small wages fund.48 According to Thomas Malthus, the prospects for the working class were even grimmer. He not only assumed that they would have to continue living off of subsistence wages, but he also infamously predicted that many of the poor would starve to death as the growing population strained the nation’s food supply. Malthus based his theory on a formula that was both simple and terrifying, two qualities that also account for the popular impact and longevity of his ideas. Malthus’s main point was that in every generation, the food supply increases arithmetically (from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5), as a roughly equal portion of new farm land is developed, but the population increases geometrically (from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16), as one generation usually doubles its number in the next generation. The population would therefore quickly exceed the nation’s food supply, and famine would result.49

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Obviously neither of these men forecasted an attractive future for the working class. Although they cared about the working class more than one might think,50 they saw them as sadly trapped in their station with little chance of improving their lot in life. Aside from public poor relief, which both men disliked, the best advice Malthus and Ricardo could prescribe was that the poor should exercise sexual self-restraint and not reproduce. Neither of them, however, had great faith in the working class’s ability to control themselves, and thus both believed that their populations would have to be checked by these two external economic factors: the iron law of wages or the doctrine of population—an outlook that obviously exposed the discipline of political economy to intense ethical criticism. The romantics, for example, all despised the political economists and their doctrines. Robert Southey called political economy the “diarrhea of the intellect” and a “hard-hearted philosophy,”51 while Thomas Carlyle took credit for coining the longer-lasting nickname “the dismal science.”52 Nostalgic agrarians to the last, they mercilessly criticized the industrialcapitalist world that political economy was helping create. As Carlyle put it, political economy sucked both the morality and the passion out of life and created men who were mere profit-maximizers, “mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand.”53 More people hated Malthus, but even the optimistic Adam Smith drew the romantics’ fire. John Ruskin, for one, called him a “half-bred and half-witted Scotchman” who encouraged his fellow men to live by the new and heretical commandment: “Thou shalt hate the Lord thy God, damn His laws, and covet thy neighbour’s goods.”54 And so we return to the presumed incompatibility of political economy and Christianity. The whole discipline seemed to be at odds with both the spirit and content of the Christian gospel. Adam Smith, its founder, had removed God from the big picture and perhaps removed morality from the smaller picture of individual economic action, while Malthus and Ricardo made the big picture seem so bleak that any student of their doctrines would naturally doubt the goodness, and perhaps even the existence, of a divine designer. And then there was the subject matter of political economy itself: mammon, its creation, exchange, distribution, and consumption. Where did the Christian virtues of love and selflessness fit into this so-called science, and why should Christians be interested in it in the first place?

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i n s p i t e of the ethical questions and religious problems that political economy raised, some antebellum Christians enthusiastically embraced the new discipline and saw it as thoroughly consistent with their religious commitments. For the clerical economists, political economy was not “the dismal science,” but was instead “the redeeming science of modern times.”1 This small but influential group of Protestant educators thought that they had solved the religious difficulties that had accompanied the birth of their discipline, and they wanted to share their happy resolutions with the rest of the country. From 1815 to 1860 the clerical economists argued forcefully that their fellow citizens and churchgoers should not only accept political economy as something useful but also wholeheartedly embrace it as a positive good, entirely compatible with their faith and intrinsically supportive of its central theology and morality. “I cannot but reverence the claims of free commerce as something holy,” wrote John McVickar, “something allied to the policy of a higher power than man.”2 Henry Vethake similarly called “the spirit of political economy, like that of Christianity itself, . . . a spirit of peace and good-will to all mankind.”3 Alonzo Potter encouraged his readers “to behold that perfect harmony which the Creator has established between his moral, intellectual and economic laws,” and Francis Wayland added that the science itself was “a systematic arrangement of the laws which God has established”—in this case, the laws of producing, exchanging, distributing, and consuming wealth.4 And finally, Francis Bowen argued that political economists had discovered an economic order in the world that made “manifest the contrivance, wisdom and beneficence of the Deity.”5 35

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These five men—John McVickar, Henry Vethake, Alonzo Potter, Francis Wayland, and Francis Bowen—made up what some historians have called “the clerical school” of political economy. Their common project, although not the central purpose of their lives, was to introduce Americans to a Christianized version of political economy, “clerical laissez faire,” as Henry F. May called it. In the antebellum North, what they wrote and taught about the subject, in spite of the differences among them, constituted an almost singular voice on the economic issues of their day, one that “dominated American economic teaching” for “at least a generation and in many institutions for far longer.”6 Francis Wayland (1796–1865) is chief among the clerical economists because of his centrality as a Christian educator in antebellum America and writer of influential textbooks. Simply put, Wayland wrote the most popular texts on moral philosophy and political economy in the entire nineteenth century. First published in 1835, his Elements of Moral Science eventually sold over a hundred thousand copies and was adopted for more courses in moral philosophy than any other text.7 In 1837 Wayland published his Elements of Political Economy, the most popular textbook on the subject before the Civil War. It sold ten thousand copies by 1843 and forty thousand by 1868. It was immediately adopted at Brown University, where Wayland taught, but from 1837 into the 1840s and 1850s it was also the standard text in political economy at Yale, Amherst, Williams, Mount Holyoke, Wesleyan, and New York University.8 Wayland’s ideas about political economy, therefore, spread far and wide to tens of thousands of antebellum students, and were even reported to have had a significant impact on Abraham Lincoln. According to his former law partner, William Herndon, Lincoln found in Wayland a nearly perfect Whig, and he “ate up, digested, and assimilated” Wayland’s Elements of Political Economy.9 Along with most of the party, Lincoln believed in economic development within the bounds of traditional morality and self-restraint, and he hated Andrew Jackson’s war on the Bank of the United States, as well as the rest of Jackson’s anti-centralizing economic policies.10 The only way in which Wayland broke with Whig orthodoxy—and this is a significant departure—was in his staunch advocacy of free trade instead of protective tariffs, a policy recommendation that all of the clerical economists shared. It is important to point out, though, that Wayland’s religious opinions about the economy, which represented Whig values, were not mere rearticulations of the party line. Wayland and the other clerical economists were not, in other words, simply mouthpieces for the Whig party. Their thoughts

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about political economy—with the notable exception of opposing the Whigsupported protective tariff—might have reflected the broader Whig culture, but they came from sources deeper than party loyalty. All of the clerical economists, Francis Wayland included, were staunch and unflagging disciples of Scottish common sense philosophy and natural theology. The first was commonly used to argue against the philosophical skepticism of David Hume and the second to argue against Hume’s atheism. According to Scottish common sense, the natural senses could be trusted to discover truths, or laws, about the external physical world. But most importantly, the natural moral sense, or conscience, that all human beings possessed could be used to discover the more invisible moral laws of the universe.11 The natural theology that Wayland believed in told him that this universe of physical and moral laws was the good creation of a benevolent God. In fact, the central tenet of natural theology was that one could deduce the existence of a benevolent creator from the supposedly obvious laws of the natural order. In other words, when properly understood, nature led to theology. Also, like the rest of the clerical economists, Wayland had started out as a moral philosopher. Moral philosophy was the capstone course in most American colleges from the eighteenth century to the Civil War. Usually taught by the college president himself in the students’ senior year, this course was designed to inculcate universal truths into the future citizens of the American republic. At the heart of the course lay the two main presuppositions of natural theology and Scottish common sense: that the Creator had established the world according to a set of natural moral laws and that human beings were endowed by that Creator with the necessary moral sense to discover those laws. The instructor, therefore, had the important charge of making sure that his students fully understood those laws and that they were making progress toward obeying them. College instructors took this opportunity, their last before graduation, to instill in their students a mostly Protestant sense of morality and view of the world. It was, however, a Protestant morality that came not from the competing and confusing claims of sectarian theology, but instead from a supposedly scientific evaluation of the world, human nature, and institutions such as the family, state, and civil society.12 This was the worldview that Wayland believed, taught, and advocated in his writings for his entire life. Wayland’s early life had prepared him well for such a career, especially when it came to his thoughts on political economy. In addition to being a leading popularizer of common sense philosophy and natural theology,

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Wayland was a living example of the American self-made man. The eldest child, Wayland was born in New York City in 1796 to a family of modest means. His parents were working-class English dissenters who had immigrated to America in 1793. His father, also named Francis, was trained as a leather merchant but became a Baptist minister in 1807, serving several churches in upstate New York. At first, the young Francis did not seek a similar career in the ministry. Ambitious for more than a humble preacher’s existence and frustrated by his family’s financial instability, Wayland sought education and advancement. He entered the sophomore class of Union College in 1811 at the age of fifteen and graduated two years later. It was there that the Reverend Eliphalet Nott taught Wayland the orthodoxies of common sense philosophy and natural theology. Wayland revered Nott as one of the leading educators of his day and modeled his own career on Nott’s life.13 Wayland did not go immediately into education, however. After his graduation from Union in 1813, he aspired to be a doctor and studied medicine for a year in Troy, New York. Sometime in 1815, however, everything changed. Like many living in the “Burned Over” district of upstate New York, Wayland was touched by the revivals there and converted wholeheartedly to evangelical Christianity. He decided to imitate his new hero, the Reverend Luther Rice, “who had given up all for Christ,” and himself gave up his dreams of a worldly medical career.14 Affected by another revival in 1819, Wayland began to write sermons and even preach extemporaneously throughout the region. He was ordained on August 21, 1821, ministered in the First Baptist Church in Boston until 1826, and then accepted a teaching position at Union College as a professor of mathematics. In 1827, however, desiring to serve his denomination in a way befitting a man of his education and ambition, Wayland accepted the presidency of Brown University, a Baptist institution, and served in that role until 1855. As the president of Brown, Wayland was intellectually conservative, which one would expect, but also surprisingly radical. Both of these sides show up in the subjects he taught or wanted taught. As an instructor of moral philosophy, he hoped to pass along to younger generations the truths of common sense philosophy and natural theology, virtually unaltered from what he had learned from Eliphalet Nott. But Wayland also pioneered some of the most radical changes in the form and content of higher education in antebellum America. Education, Wayland understood, was the key to opportunity and material prosperity. As a result, he emphasized the practical and public function of

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higher education because he wanted to help as many of his fellow American common men as possible—people like himself, who had also worked their way up from humble origins. In all of his educational writings Wayland asserted that education should be for the benefit of “the public,” and since the present system was not structured with this goal in mind, it should therefore be changed.15 He took special aim at the classical curriculum, which he argued was entirely impractical for the needs of a working community. In modernizing America, Wayland asked, “Where are our classical scholars?” “It is manifest to the most casual observer,” he wrote, “that the movement of civilization is precisely in the line of the useful arts. Steam, machinery and commerce, have built up a class of society which formerly was only of secondary importance.”16 And for “class,” Wayland did not mean a “working class” but instead had in mind the “useful” or “productive” class of mechanics, merchants, and scientists. It was this ever-growing class of society, Wayland contended—the real heart and soul of America—that colleges should be educating but were not. In a passage replete with the language of political economy, Wayland lamented this educational failure: Our colleges are not filled because we do not furnish the education desired by the people. We have constructed them upon the idea, that they are to be schools of preparation for the professions [the ministry, law, medicine, etc.]. Our customers, therefore, come from the smallest class of society. . . . We have produced an article for which the demand is diminishing.17

To solve these educational deficiencies, as well as a financial crisis at Brown, Wayland instituted his “New System.” He did not abolish all courses in the classics from Brown’s curriculum, but complemented them with instruction in agriculture, chemistry, mechanics, geology, and political economy. His reforms also made it possible for students to earn a master’s degree in the same four years that it had traditionally taken to earn a bachelor’s degree. The “New System” went into effect in the fall of 1850 and was an initial success. Enrollment jumped from 150 to 174 and peaked at 283 in 1853–54. Contrary to Wayland’s predictions, however, the increased enrollment did not come from members of the “productive classes” who wanted to receive a more practical training in geology or mechanics, but ironically from students who wanted to study the classics and receive a master’s degree instead of a bachelor’s degree for the same four years of work.18 Also contradictory to Wayland’s predictions, the personal effort required to make the “New System” succeed proved to be more than he could manage. At the end of

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four years he was exhausted, and on August 21, 1855, wrote his letter of resignation.19 Wayland’s failed efforts at educational reform tell us much about his views on political economy and illustrate the paradoxical coexistence of his conservative and radical inclinations. On the one hand, he enthusiastically welcomed the changes brought about by a developing market economy, so much so that he was willing to alter radically the form and content of higher education to meet the needs of that economy. But on the other hand, he was committed to the intellectual and ethical conservatism of moral philosophy. As one historian has put it, Wayland was the quintessential “political economist as educator,”20 with these two strands of his personality—one an intellectual discipline and the other a vocation—mutually reinforcing one another. His affinity for political economy dictated some of his educational reforms, but his “character” as an order-minded educator in some ways created his affinity for political economy in the first place. But while Wayland was the most influential popularizer of political economy, he was neither the first nor the most articulate of the clerical economists. Those distinctions belong to John McVickar (1787–1868). Unlike Wayland, McVickar was a child of privilege. John, his father, had emigrated from Ireland, became a wealthy New York merchant, and provided the best education possible for his son. McVickar attended Columbia College, graduated first in his class in 1804, and—staunch young Federalist that he was—eulogized the recently slain Alexander Hamilton in his valedictory speech. McVickar went on to study theology, was ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1812, and that same year became rector of a church in Hyde Park, New York. In 1817 he was made professor of moral philosophy at Columbia and possibly, although this is debatable, offered the very first courses on political economy in America.21 For our purposes here, McVickar is most valuable as a writer of some of the earliest and pithiest sources on Christian political economy. Regardless of whether he taught the first course in the subject, he was definitely one of the first advocates for its inclusion in college curricula and its acceptance among the American public. His Outlines of Political Economy in 1825, “Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy” in 1830, “Review of Thomas Chalmers’ On Political Economy” in 1832, and First Lessons in Political Economy in 1835 were all published to win over those who were skeptical about political economy’s morality and practicality. McVickar taught political economy at Columbia for forty years from 1817 to 1857. During this time he was also heavily involved in land speculation and

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almost lost his entire fortune in the Panic of 1837. In 1845 he reflected penitently on his earlier “worldliness,” saying: “All the sorrows of my life from all other causes have not I think, equaled those from this single source.”22 After this shock he continued to write about the need for strong banks to prevent such catastrophes in the future—he was still a Hamiltonian—but he did not write much more about the harmony of political economy and Christianity. In 1857, as if tired of the subject entirely, he gave up the position of professor of political economy to Francis Lieber and took the chair of the evidences of natural and revealed religion, which he occupied until his retirement from Columbia in 1864.23 Like McVickar, Alonzo Potter (1800–1865) was an Episcopalian political economist and had been a child of privilege. Potter’s family line dated back to some of the very first settlers in America, and his father had been a successful farmer in Dutchess County, New York, and later a state legislator. Like Wayland, Potter attended Union College, and the two men were classmates. He graduated in 1818 and, while studying to become an Episcopal priest, served as a tutor at Union in 1819; in 1822 he was made professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. In 1824, the year of his ordination, he married Sarah Maria, the daughter of Union College president Eliphalet Nott. He ministered in a church in Boston from 1826 to 1831 and then returned to Union College to teach moral philosophy and political economy for the next fifteen years. In 1845 he was elected bishop of Pennsylvania and also served as a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania.24 Like the other clerical economists, Potter wanted to defend the new discipline against the charge of being inconsistent with Christianity. In 1840 he published his textbook, Political Economy, Its Objects, Uses and Principles Considered with Reference to the Condition of the American People, which was, like McVickar’s Americanized version of John Ramsey McCulloch’s text, a reprinting of George Poulett Scrope’s 1833 Political Economy as Applied to the Present State of Britain. Potter chose to reprint Scrope, of all people, because his text was a polemic against the pessimistic theories of Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo. According to Scrope, and thus Potter, the natural laws of the economy did not lead to starvation or working-class immiseration, which would decidedly problematize the idea of a benevolent creator, but instead led to greater happiness for all levels of society.25 Potter was especially interested in the working class and desperately wanted to avoid their radicalization. At the end of Scrope’s text, for example, Potter added his own supplementary chapter on “The Condition of Laboring Men in the United States,” which was a reprint of his 1838 article

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“Trades Unions,” published in the Whig periodical the New York Review. In this text he denied the existence of fixed classes in America and argued against the creation of unions because they artificially created those classes. For Potter, unions locked people into a working-class status and thus prevented them from individually improving themselves—a very un-American practice. Unions also created hostility and perhaps violence where there was, according to Potter, natural harmony instead. Educating the working class, Potter believed, and especially educating them in the truths of political economy, was a much better solution to working-class discontentment than trades unions could ever be. Through an education in political economy they would see for themselves the folly of forming unions, fighting against their employers, and resisting the “inviolable and resistless laws of nature, which,” as Potter put it, “are nothing less than the laws of God.”26 Potter also believed in reforming higher education. As a trustee at the University of Pennsylvania, Potter sought to change the institution along the lines of what Wayland proposed for Brown. In general he wanted to adapt the university to the needs of the developing marketplace and, in fact, open it up to market forces. In particular he wanted to allow students to choose from an expanded curriculum of more practical classes that would train them for their future work, and he wanted to instill a spirit of competition among professors. In his plan those instructors who were unable to attract students would presumably lose their jobs. Unlike Wayland’s five-year experiment at Brown, however, Potter was unable to implement these changes at the University of Pennsylvania. Potter’s successful adversary in educational reform was Henry Vethake (1792–1866), a fellow trustee of the university and a fellow clerical economist. Whereas Wayland and Potter wanted to democratize higher education, Vethake, on the other hand, defended its inherent elitism. Like the other clerical economists, Vethake strongly advocated the inclusion of political economy in the college curriculum. But when he thought about the benefits of an education in political economy, he had in mind America’s future leaders, not its future merchants and mechanics. Wayland and Potter, on the other hand, wanted to teach political economy to the “productive classes” to make them more efficient, prosperous, and happy contributors to the economic mechanism. Vethake wanted to impact those who would be making the laws that would affect the nation’s economy.27 In general, Vethake was the most idiosyncratic of the clerical economists, but still orthodox in his opinions about the issues that mattered most to the group. For example, unlike the other clerical economists, Vethake was

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of Prussian and not British descent, and was born outside of the United States, in British Guiana. His parents immigrated to America in 1796 when Henry was four. Like John McVickar, Vethake attended Columbia College in New York City, graduating in 1808; and like the other clerical economists, Vethake became a prominent educator in the antebellum North. From 1817 to 1836 he taught mathematics, natural philosophy, and political economy at a number of institutions, including the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), Dickinson College, and Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. From 1836 to 1859 he stayed at the University of Pennsylvania, serving as vice provost from 1845 to 1855 and then as provost from 1855–59. Unsuccessful as an administrator, however, he left the University of Pennsylvania for the Polytechnic College, also in Philadelphia, where he taught mathematics until his death in 1866.28 Perhaps the greatest difference between Vethake and the other clerical economists was the fact that he never pursued a parallel career as an ordained minister. He was also more of a Jacksonian than a Whig—his brother John was one of the founders of the New York Locofocos—and he was less doctrinaire about the virtues of free trade. But Vethake more than made up for these supposed deficiencies with his emphatic and oft-repeated insistence on the compatibility of political economy with Christian morality. In both his 1838 textbook, Principles of Political Economy, as well as his public lectures on the subject, he set out to prove the trustworthiness of the new science. Instead of something that Christians should fear, Vethake insisted to his wary audience that political economy was positively infused with religious and moral lessons, and in fact stood alongside Christianity as a teacher of morality to all who would listen to its scientific truths. Thus even though much of the content of his political economy was rather technical and dry, its tone, especially in places like introductions and conclusions, was one of moral earnestness. Francis Bowen (1811–1890) was the youngest of the clerical economists, and like Vethake a bit idiosyncratic. Neither Bowen nor Vethake was an ordained minister, but Bowen was a Unitarian, which was anathema to most orthodox Protestants in antebellum America. Nevertheless, like Vethake, who had questionable politics but orthodox Christian economics, Bowen had questionable theology, but a right view of the economy and God’s place in it, thanks to his unshakable faith in Scottish common sense philosophy and natural theology. Unsurprisingly, this future Unitarian hailed from Massachusetts. Born in Charlestown to a family of limited means, Bowen nevertheless secured a

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good education for himself and eventually studied at Harvard, graduating in 1833 after only three years. From 1833 to 1843 he was a tutor and then instructor at Harvard in “Natural, Mental, and Moral Philosophy,” and was a regular contributor to the erudite North American Review. From 1843 to 1853 he was editor of the Review, and from 1843 to 1847 the director of another highbrow periodical as well, the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge. In 1853 he was appointed the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity at Harvard.29 In his political economy and general views of society, Bowen was perhaps the most conservative of the clerical economists. Called by some the “old Roman,” he unabashedly attacked everything that appeared socially radical, and he took special aim at the intellectual predecessors and heirs of the French Revolution: Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Comte, and others whom he considered na¨ıve utopians and dangerous philosophical speculators. In 1851 he almost went too far when he attacked the popular Hungarian revolutionary Lajos Kossuth, who was touring America at the time. As a result Harvard refused to confirm him in his appointment to the Alford professorship, which he had received in 1850, and for two years he was without an academic position. But in 1853 he won his battle with the university and received the professorship, a job he kept for the rest of his career.30 As a pundit and professor, Bowen too wanted to demonstrate the harmony between Christianity and the discoveries of science. He claimed that science was a study of natural laws under the providence of God, and that in political economy Christian morality was a powerful variable. Thus, far from being an amoral science, political economy proved the connection between ethics and economic activity instead. On the level playing field of a free society—and the conservative Bowen unwaveringly argued that America was such a society— it was always the morally upright who succeeded: the frugal, the sober, the prudent, the industrious. According to Bowen, there did not need to be any more proof of the harmony between God’s moral laws and his economic ones. The obvious wisdom and benevolence of the Creator extended even into the messy realm of human economic life where virtuous behavior was rewarded with material blessings.31 These five men are the core of “the clerical school”32 of Northern antebellum political economy. There are, however, three other Christian economists whose texts will be quoted in the rest of this section and who therefore deserve a brief biographical introduction. All three of these men—Lyman Atwater, Calvin Colton, and Francis Lieber—could be called clerical economists themselves, in that their views on political economy were largely consistent with the other five men, but they either wrote fewer texts on the subject or

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were in some other way outsiders to the orthodoxy of the Northern clerical economists. Lyman H. Atwater (1813–1883), for example, fits the mold of the clerical economists almost perfectly. He came from one of the founding families of New Haven, attended Yale, was ordained a Congregational minister, and from 1835 to 1854 pastored a church in Fairfield, Connecticut. From 1854 until his death in 1883, he taught moral and political science at the College of New Jersey (Princeton) and thus did most of his writing on economic subjects after the Civil War. Like Francis Bowen, who lived even longer into the postbellum era, Atwater was consistently conservative, lambasting the intellectual challenges of Darwinism and opposing educational reforms, such as the broadening of the curriculum, and social reforms, such as women’s suffrage.33 Atwater’s conservatism was evident before the Civil War as well, but when he did write he devoted his attention mostly to philosophical and theological topics—subjects more fitting to his pastoral duties at the time. For our purposes here, he really wrote only three relevant pieces: Judgments in the House of God in 1842, a jeremiad against financial imprudence; “The True Progress of Society” in 1852, a manifesto of social conservatism; and in 1853 a review of Henry A. Boardman’s The Bible in the Countinghouse. In all of these pieces, Atwater definitely shared the general outlook of the clerical economists, but he never wrote any texts or sermons on the subject of political economy per se. Calvin Colton’s writings were more like the clerical economists in style but less so in substance. Like Atwater, Colton (1789–1857) was also born into a prominent New England family, attended Yale, and became an ordained minister, first as a Presbyterian and later as an Episcopalian. He was a prolific writer on subjects from revivals to church politics to immigration to territorial expansion. Most of all, though, Colton was a die-hard Whig, at one time editing the publication True Whig and writing two hagiographic biographies of Henry Clay. The other clerical economists undoubtedly shared in this Whig culture and outlook, but Colton followed the party line completely and advocated protective tariffs instead of free trade. In many ways, Colton was much more of a propagandist than a real political economist though, and he wrote only two relevant sources on the subject: The Rights of Labor in 1846 and Public Economy for the United States in 1848. Both of these were amateurish forays into the field, however, and his over 500-page textbook—which was little more than an extended protectionist polemic— had, in one historian’s opinion, “a mass of statistics of little relation to his arguments.”34

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Colton thus shared in the clerical economists’ preoccupation with social and intellectual order, but he also serves as a useful point of comparison. Unlike the clerical economists, he was someone whose political commitments and identity came first, ultimately shaping his protectionist political economy. The clerical economists, on the other hand, because they were all college professors, cared most about their commitments to the intellectual systems of Scottish common sense philosophy, natural theology, and the new but problematic discipline of political economy. Colton did overlap with the clerical economists on some issues though, like the importance of the division of labor and his support for manufacturing. It is therefore fitting to include him in this section on those who were “assured” that the development of market capitalism was a part of God’s good plan for the world. But he also departed significantly from the consensus of the clerical economists, and Adam Smith’s whole discipline, because he let his political identity lead, especially to protectionism, and his economic ideas follow. Perhaps the biggest outsider of these three, but strangely the one closest to the center of clerical-economic orthodoxy, was Francis Lieber (1800– 1872). Born in Berlin, Lieber served in the Prussian army and was wounded at Waterloo. He later attended the University of Berlin, but his agitation for German nationalism got him first expelled and later imprisoned. In 1826 he escaped to England and later moved to Boston, where he worked translating the widely respected German encyclopedia into the Encyclopedia Americana. He also made contacts among some of the most powerful political figures of the time, all of whom strongly supported the Bank of the United States: Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Nicholas Biddle himself. Lieber was idiosyncratic in that for much of his career he was a foreignborn Whig in the South. From 1835 to 1856 he taught political economy at South Carolina College, where he was publicly pro-slavery, but secretly supported the abolitionist cause. In 1856 he left South Carolina, reportedly frustrated by his failure to secure the presidency of the college in 1855 and tired of having to hide his abolitionist views. In 1857 he replaced John McVickar at Columbia College in New York as professor of political economy and history. The transition from McVickar to Lieber at Columbia reveals much about Lieber’s political economy. For one, there is definite continuity between the two men. Although in the South, this Prussian-born Whig could possibly be counted as one of the Northern clerical economists. In addition to being secretly anti-slavery, he was also pro-development. The problem, as with Atwater, is that Lieber did not write very much on political economy.

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But where Atwater, the minister, was more interested in philosophy and theology, Lieber was more interested in the developing field of political science. In fact, when he arrived at Columbia he insisted that his position be renamed the chair of political science instead of political economy. This is the major discontinuity between McVickar and Lieber and indicates Lieber’s overriding interest in subjects outside the bounds of political economy. In fact, he published only two sources on the subject: Essays on Property and Labor in 1841 and Some Truths Worth Remembering, Given as a Recapitulation, in a Farewell Lecture to the Class of Political Economy in 1849. Both of these, however, reiterate the clerical-economic argument that free trade and the division of labor were sanctioned by God through the fortuitous truths of Scottish common sense philosophy and natural theology.35

chapter three

Motivations

s o w h y did these religious educators want to reconcile political economy with their Christian faith in the first place? Understanding the clerical economists’ motives comes only after we understand the historical context in which they lived and moved and had their being. In particular we need to understand two contexts that the clerical economists thought of as interrelated: the contentious and often chaotic world of ideas, and the equally contentious and chaotic world of the new American republic. The clerical economists had an overriding concern to maintain order in both of these realms, and they often made surprising intellectual compromises to achieve that end. Their appropriation of Adam Smith’s political economy was precisely such a compromise. To order-minded Americans like the clerical economists, the most threatening enemies of stability by far were the twin legacies of eighteenth-century Europe: religious skepticism and the social upheaval of the French Revolution. As educators of the future leaders of the American republic, the clerical economists knew that they had an important role to play in keeping the national ship afloat. The new nation, barely half a century old, was a huge gamble with extremely high stakes. There were great potential rewards, but also great risks. America really could be a model nation of peace and prosperity for all of its (free) citizens—the “city on a hill” that some of its founders had always hoped it would be. Or the experiment in popular government could prove to be a total disaster, coming apart at the seams and spiraling millions of Americans into poverty, anarchy, and war. It was these types of national anxieties that engendered in conservatives like the 49

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clerical economists a predilection for all things stabilizing and a loathing of all things “radical” or destabilizing.1 It is also in this context of conservatism versus radicalism that we see just how fitting but also how peculiar was this alliance of American Protestantism with the young discipline of political economy. In most instances in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the categories of religious versus anti-religious overlapped with those of conservative versus radical. For example, stability-minded American Protestants considered thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, David Hume, and even Thomas Paine doubly threatening because they were both revolutionary (either socially or intellectually) and anti-religious. On the other hand, they could consider figures like Isaac Newton, John Locke, Dugald Stewart, and Thomas Reid doubly valuable because they were both important intellectual allies in the campaigns against skepticism and social radicalism, and—happily—could be counted among the Christian faithful. As the nineteenth century got under way, some things remained the same. The radical camp, for example, swelled with the advent of Auguste Comte, Charles Fourier, and other socialists, communists, and free-thinking Utopians; and it remained for the most part anti-religious. Adam Smith and the other British political economists, on the other hand, counted as some of the most influential additions to the conservatives’ camp; but—and here is the rub—they were also the greatest exception to the conservatives’ general pro-religion rule. Exactly why they made this noticeable exception is, on one level, a rather easy question to answer. In spite of the religious problems that accompanied political economy, these educators and self-appointed guardians of a stable republic saw in the new science ideas and prescriptions that would maintain order. There is an important point to be made, however, about exactly where they wanted this “order and stability” to be applied. It is also on this point that the interpretation given here makes a significant departure from earlier treatments of the subject. Michael J. L. O’Connor and Henry F. May, the two scholars who have previously investigated the connection between antebellum religious and economic thought, ask the same questions, but in their answers they focus on a different dimension of the historical context. In fact, they even use the same terminology of “conservative” versus “radical” but with different meanings. In the stories they tell of how and why these Protestant educators adopted political economy; they tend to highlight the importance of the political environment and the clerical economists’ commitments to the conservative

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(and generally elitist) political interests of the Northeast, against the more radical (populist and agrarian) political interests of the South and West. In particular, they argue that the clerical economists appropriated political economy because it suited the “interests” or “needs” of the American mercantile elite in their battle against the radicalism of Jacksonian democracy.2 “In America the commercial class was the aristocracy of the Northeast,” O’Connor writes. “The clerical school’s political economy naturally found itself more favorably disposed toward commercial interests than toward those of the lower orders or toward the democracy that was threatening capture of at least the political institutions of the country.”3 Henry May makes exactly the same argument. The emergence of political economy in the Northeast, he claims, came out of a conservative reaction to changing times. “Confronted by the increasing militancy and popularity of radical doctrine in the Jacksonian years,” May writes, college administrators, like other bulwarks of orthodox Protestantism, found it necessary to develop a more systematic, up-to-date defense. Relying on Whig businessmen for moral and financial assistance, the colleges needed a subject which would appeal by its practical soundness to these new allies. To meet these needs they turned toward the rising science of political economy.4

Like O’Connor, May highlights the politically conservative origins of this discipline. In the opinion of both of them, the clerical economists sought to justify the actions and outlook of the northeastern merchant class with whom they were allied. The whole discipline of political economy was therefore nothing more than “a rationalization of the existing [mercantile] order”5 and an attempt to defend that order against its radical, Jacksonian critics. It is more instructive, however, to shift attention away from the clerical economists’ suspected social, financial, and political connections, and focus instead on their religious and national concerns. Elaborating on the work of D. H. Meyer, it is argued here that the clerical economists wanted to accomplish two objectives: to explain how God was still a part of the developing market economy and to explain in no uncertain terms how this developing market economy was good for America. The first objective spoke to their religious fears, in particular their fear that God was becoming irrelevant in a modernizing world.6 The second spoke to their republican hopes that the nation could be both prosperous and moral at the same time. And to the clerical economists’ great joy, they had become convinced and “assured” that

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with their Christianized version of political economy they had confronted and, to their minds, successfully overcome these serious challenges to their religious orthodoxy and their traditional morality. They did so, however, by ironically turning a potentially devastating enemy—Adam Smith and his science of political economy—into one of their most powerful allies. This intellectual maneuver saved the day and fit within their historical context perfectly, but it also avoided the foundational questions of das Adam Smith Problem that have continued to the present. All of the American clerical economists revered Adam Smith as the founder of their science.7 In fact, it is safe to say that Smith influenced the clerical economists more directly than any other economic theorist. They valued the very things that Smith valued and sought the same end for their nation that Smith prescribed for all nations. His notion of a wealthy, opulent, happy, civilized, and peaceful nation was attractive to these young American educators and self-appointed guardians of the new republic. The clerical economists simply accepted his doctrines as “true,” with all of the gravity that that word carried in their day, and appropriated them wholly into their own work, sometimes shamelessly plagiarizing Smith’s most powerful illustrations. Both Alonzo Potter and Francis Wayland, for example, copied Smith’s anecdote of the pin manufactory almost verbatim.8 In large part, Smith’s enlightenment optimism about the harmony and perspicuity of nature and nature’s laws fit perfectly in the American intellectual ethos of Scottish common sense philosophy and natural theology. By contrast, David Ricardo’s and Thomas Malthus’s more pessimistic theories about the industrializing economy of nineteenth-century Britain did not receive as much attention in the American land of endless frontiers and postmillennial optimism. The clerical economists were indebted to Ricardo especially for his more sophisticated definitions of economic terms, but they took their cues from Smith when it came to the big picture. Thus, technically speaking, they were Ricardians in their substance but Smithian in style, and when it came to reconciling political economy with their Christian faith, it was the style that mattered most.9 Simply put, it was easier to find God in the kind economic system of Adam Smith, the “practical atheist,”10 than it was to explain the apparently cruel deity of Ricardo’s and Malthus’s economic theories. To the clerical economists, the economic system that Smith described was so beautiful in its structure, so intricate in its operation, and so good in its outcomes that it must have been the design of the Christian God. Smith, for his part, had simply removed God from the picture. The clerical economists, for their part,

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merely put Him back in. And as bold of a theological move as this might have been, it was not the impossible intellectual stretch that it might seem. The clerical economists recognized in Smith’s system such an emphasis on harmony and machine-like symmetry that, although it was discovered and described by a thinker of questionable religious orthodoxy, it could easily be made to support the claims of revealed religion. This was the “hidden” or “secret” theology of which modern Smith scholars still speak and which the clerical economists claimed to have found on their own.11 Steeped as the clerical economists were in the natural theology of their day, which told them that all of nature was the work of a benevolent creator, they rather easily inserted God back into Smith’s mechanism, where he fit comfortably as its designer and possibly its sustainer. The clerical economists agreed with almost everything that Smith deemed “nature” or “natural”: the so-called natural commercial impulses of human beings, the natural stages through which societies progressed on their way to civilization, and the natural laws that those societies, as well as individuals, had to obey if they hoped to progress. Smith and the clerical economists differed, however, over the implications of what was deemed “natural.” As mentioned earlier, for Smith the order in nature did not necessitate a divine orderer. For the clerical economists, the study of nature, even in something as potentially unnatural as human commerce, still led them to faith in the wisdom and goodness of a divine creator.12 Smith’s economic system, in their opinion, was harmonious and apparently good (in that it made people happy through material fulfillment), both of which were attributes consistent with the tenets of natural theology. Harmony and especially happiness are also key components of the ethical theory of utilitarianism, which, as we will see, the clerical economists unwittingly and paradoxically subscribed to.13 But in addition to loving Smith’s general economic outlook, his “one harmonious system,” as Alonzo Potter put it, the clerical economists also accepted Smith’s more specific doctrines, definitions, and outline of the subject almost without reservation.14 The first and arguably the most important of all of Smith’s doctrines was the division of labor. It was on this principle that Smith grounded his entire economic system. He cared very much about the exchange of wealth within a market, but it was the division of labor that produced wealth to begin with and thus it was with the division of labor that Smith himself began. The division of labor, as Smith made clear, was the most important variable in any nation’s wealth. “In every improved society,” he argued, each worker perfects his individual craft, instead of the same worker performing

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multiple tasks imperfectly—“the farmer is generally nothing but a farmer; the manufacturer, nothing but a manufacturer.” Smith then illustrated his principle with the now-famous example of the pin makers. Smith’s lesson from this was simple: the division of labor allows for unprecedented levels of productivity and will greatly increase a nation’s aggregate wealth.15 As Smith argued, the division and specialization of labor is productive and mutually beneficial not only on the small scale of a pin factory, but also on the larger scale of whole societies and nations. In his general argument about the “nature and causes of the wealth of nations,” Smith always emphasized that these “causes,” which he also referred to as “the Progress of Opulence,” were themselves “natural.” The opulent society, which in his opinion was the good society, simply could not be fabricated or invented by a controlling, centralized institution but rather was the natural manifestation of collective human commercial activity if left to its own free operation. Believing in a definite hierarchy of civilizations, ranging from “the rude state of society,” to the “improved one,”16 Smith also believed that individual societies, no matter how backward, could advance in this hierarchy through the division of labor and the wise allocation of capital. The progress of a society through his four stages of hunter/gatherer, shepherd, feudal, and finally commercial, he made clear, was “the natural order of things” and not the exclusive privilege of any particular culture or civilization. To support his argument about the universal potential for economic development, Smith famously grounded his understanding of the progress of society in what he called human beings’ natural “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” A society’s journey to opulence, “though very slow and gradual,” he wrote, is the result of the division of labor, a division that comes from “a certain propensity in human nature” rather than from “the effect of any human wisdom”—and for “human wisdom,” read “human institution,” or “state.”17 Any time the state presumed to know what was best for the economy— and remember that Smith’s main polemical purpose in writing his Inquiry was to combat the reigning mercantilism of the day—disaster and poverty followed. As he concluded his chapter on opulence: “Though this natural order of things [a progressing nation’s inclination to divide its labor] must have taken place in some degree in every such society, it has, in all the modern states of Europe, been, in many respects, entirely inverted.”18 That was why Spain and Portugal, although previously among the wealthiest nations in Europe because of their colonies’ gold and silver mines, were later some of Europe’s poorest. They governed their economies according to the ineffectual and outdated philosophies of feudalism and mercantilism.

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Smith left no doubt as to how he thought states should manage their economies, both domestically and internationally. Although he never used the term himself in his work, his philosophy can best be called one of laissez-faire: simply let the market alone and nations will naturally progress in opulence as their individual citizens, acting on their natural “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange,” will be “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of [their] intention”—the “end” being the increased wealth of the whole society.19 Internationally, Smith declared that there should be a division of labor among the nations themselves—a division that he predicted would result in equally salubrious effects both for the individual nations who participated and for the material living standards of the entire world. Smith obviously had an optimistic view of economic activity. From the smallest commercial relationships (those among individuals) to the largest (those among nations) Smith had faith both in the nature of mankind and in the natural harmony of the economic mechanism. Individual human beings, he believed, were self-interested creatures who could nevertheless not live independently. Instead, the “almost constant occasion for the help of [their] brethren” brought them together into economic networks in which they could best meet their own needs by producing a desired good or service that they then exchanged for the goods or services of others. Smith marveled at this economic order whose genius held in perfect balance the wills of self-interested individuals, on the one hand, and the collective good of the whole society, on the other. Political theorists had been debating for centuries how best to achieve this balance. Smith presumed to have solved the dilemma by stepping outside the bounds of political discourse and addressing the problem from the vantage point of economic theory. His answer to the question, in fact, was thoroughly anti-political. Given what he claimed to know about human nature and the good end to which unimpeded commercial activity would naturally lead, Smith argued that it was best to leave people alone. There was no need for the state to tinker with nature’s economic mechanism. All such interferences were merely, as he put it, “violence and artifice,” disruptions to “the natural course of things” that would put a nation back decades if not centuries in its progress toward opulence.20 To the American clerical economists, Smith’s words had the ring of gospel truth about them. In their minds, the world of commerce was one big harmonious mechanism with the God of Providence and progress behind it, and should therefore be exalted as good, right, and natural rather than maligned by skeptics as something sordid, speculative, and immoral. The Creator had obviously designed the mechanism for the good of both mankind

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and of all creation, and Adam Smith—infidel though he was—had unlocked its mysteries. This was one reason why the clerical economists were so enthusiastic about Smith’s discipline of political economy. They thought of it as a God-given intellectual tool that reinforced their natural-theology worldview. They were also drawn to political economy because it could make their new nation rich. As Americans who were anxious to see their republican experiment succeed, Smith told them exactly what they wanted to hear. The clerical economists especially liked Smith’s notion of civilization, and the slow process that most nations had to go through before they could reach it. But they believed that America was different. In their land so richly blessed with an abundance of natural resources and an absence of stifling social traditions and hierarchies, leaders had the unprecedented opportunity to build from scratch a nation and a national economy. As the clerical economists recognized, America also had the opportunity to skip over the first three stages of national economic development as Smith had described them and be a commercially civilized nation from the start. This group of educators was acutely aware that the stakes in this game of nation building were high. Would America be protectionist, which smacked of the mercantilism that Smith so vehemently opposed, and go the way of Spain and Portugal, wasting her rich natural resources by following outdated and wrongheaded economic policies? Or would America embrace the doctrines of free trade, letting the economy take its natural course and leading the nation to opulence as Smith had optimistically predicted? And yet even in the ideal Smithian world in which different nations efficiently specialized in the production of different goods, the clerical economists also knew that there would be fierce competition, especially during the early stages when nations had to struggle to find their niche and claim their territory in the global economy. Francis Wayland, for one, understood this reality well and expressed his anxiety that America might lose out in the new competition among nations. The best insurance that it or any nation would win, as he put it, was “to become rich as fast as possible” and to observe Smith’s doctrines of free trade and the division of labor as closely as possible.21 The clerical economists, in short, shared with Adam Smith both the same end (civilization through wealth), and his prescribed means of reaching that end (the division of labor). They believed what he had written about the progress of a society through the various stages of civilization and they wanted their beloved nation to be in the vanguard of that progress.

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Francis Wayland, showing clearly the clerical economists’ preoccupation with civilization and their disdain for “savagery,” wrote: It is only the savage, that combines in his own person, in all their departments, the character of philosopher, inventor, and operator. He approximates to the civilized state, only in so far as he begins to confine himself to some particular calling. And it is always in the most advanced periods of civilization, that division of labor is carried to its ultimate limits.22

This passage illustrates well Wayland’s obsession with progress and his obvious intellectual indebtedness to Adam Smith, two qualities he shared with the other American clerical economists. Lyman Atwater, writing almost a decade and a half after Wayland, also lauded the progress of society that accompanied the division of labor, culminating in the development of the Anglo-American financial market, a step that he considered to be the new high point of human achievement. “With the progress of civilization,” he wrote, this division of labor goes forward indefinitely, ever reaching minuter, and still minuter subdivisions. Hence arises and ever increases the mutual exchange of commodities, on this simple principle, that each one can obtain a larger supply of the comforts of life, by working exclusively in one vocation, and, with the surplus products of that, paying for what else he desires, than by attempting to produce all himself. Such an attempt would reduce him at once to the savage state, in which the utmost toil would only yield a coarse, scanty, miserable subsistence.23

Atwater’s tone is not as forceful as Wayland’s but the two obviously shared the same set of priorities. All societies should aim to achieve civilization through the ever-increasing division of labor. Savagery, on the other hand, was what those societies risked when they failed to keep pace with the times and divide their labor appropriately. The clerical economists were especially enthusiastic about the prediction that the division of labor would produce material blessings for all individuals. For Smith, the fruits of the commercial, or civilized, state of society were not for the rich alone to enjoy. On the contrary, the division of labor improved the lives of people from all strata of society while at the same time enriching the nation as a whole. In “consequence of the division of labour,” he wrote, again hanging his whole economic system on this one principle, “every workman” would have a surplus of produced goods or money that he would gladly exchange for the produced goods of “every other workman being exactly in the same situation.” And because of this increase in wealth

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and manufactured goods, as well as the natural desire to exchange, Smith predicted, “universal opulence” would extend “itself to the lowest ranks of the people.”24 Or, as Francis Wayland argued, “that nation which is most assiduously cherishing the means for availing itself of the benefits of all the laws of the Creator, will most rapidly provide itself with the comforts and conveniences and luxuries of life, in the greatest abundance and at the least possible cost”25 —comforts, conveniences, and luxuries that all could share. Civilization, after all, was not only for the rich. It is also worth noting that this quotation by Wayland evinces no Puritan anxiety about falling into greed, idleness, or the worship of mammon. Nor is there any republican fear about the effeminizing effect of luxury. Quite the contrary, it was “the comforts and conveniences and luxuries of life”—all of which were the fruits of civilization—that Wayland thought a society, even a supposedly Christian society, should aim to accumulate. “Accumulation of wealth,” as Francis Lieber put it, “so far from being any thing sordid, is indispensable to civilization.” “Civilization,” he argued, again mentioning the goal that he assumed all of his readers would share, “stands in need of greatly accumulated wealth; progressive civilization of progressive wealth.” And the Bible, he continued, “does not dispense with political economy. The Bible gives principles; political economy seeks the means and methods of carrying them out; . . . for, its subjects are closely connected with civilization, freedom, and the most sacred interests of man.”26 To the clerical economists there was no great conflict between ethics and political economy, between Christianity and civilization. Generally speaking, they could champion Smith’s system as both true, in that it accurately described nature’s, and thus God’s, unbreakable economic laws; and good, in that its principles and prescriptions led nations to fulfillment as civilized societies, and individuals to fulfillment as wealthy and happy consumers. As we will see in the next chapter, however, not everyone shared this point of view, and the question of the morality of political economy still lingered.

chapter four

Moral Problems, Scientific Solutions

“i t h a s been often questioned whether Political Economy be a moral science,” John McVickar admitted in 1825, and then confessed: “The decision of Adam Smith and his followers is against it; the production of material wealth is the only question they admit.”1 Six years later, Henry Vethake, another one of America’s first clerical economists, expressed similar thoughts about the apparent incompatibility of Christianity and political economy. “The speculations of the political economists,” he wrote bluntly, “have been sometimes suspected of leading to conclusions inconsistent with the precepts of revealed religion.”2 All of the clerical economists wanted to respond to these religious suspicions about their discipline and its subject. The most pressing question, as always, was about the morality of political economy and the economic system it claimed to describe. Was, as Francis Lieber insisted, the “accumulation of wealth” really an unequivocal good and “indispensable to civilization?”3 What about luxury? The very thing that classical republicans had considered anathema for millennia these leading Christian educators were now touting as a key ingredient to economic progress. The clerical economists largely dealt with these objections by making a critical distinction between the emerging market capitalist system and the behavior of individuals within that system. Without doubt, they were champions of the developing system and institutions of market capitalism, and of its science, political economy; but they were still moral critics of the greedy individuals—the speculators and profiteers—who manipulated the economy and made their personal fortunes at the expense of other people. This distinction between individual morality and systemic morality was a 59

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key guiding principle for the clerical economists and is dealt with more fully in the following two sections on the contrarians and the economic moralists. The rest of this section focuses on how the clerical economists understood the market-capitalist system that political economy described and how they defended it and its science against religious objections with their own religious arguments. Before moving on to this set of arguments, though, it is important to mention that the clerical economists often hindered their own cause. Those who questioned political economy’s morality had good reason for their doubts: namely, because the clerical economists themselves divorced their field from explicit ethical considerations. Francis Wayland, for example, wrote in the preface to his 1840 edition of Elements of Political Economy that he had purposefully “omitted many considerations which are frequently introduced into discussions on this subject”—and especially the moral considerations. It “is a question of Ethics,” he wrote, “whether men are or are not morally bound to fulfill their contracts.” With such an issue, he abruptly concluded, “Political Economy has nothing to do. Its only business is, to decide whether a given contract were or were not wise. This is the only question, therefore, treated of in the discussion of this subject in the following work.” But then, no doubt to calm his readers’ anxieties, he added that the “principles of Political Economy are so closely analogous to those of Moral Philosophy, that almost every question in the one, may be argued on grounds belonging to the other.”4 Readers could therefore rest assured that economic concerns were indissolubly, even if invisibly linked to ethical ones. For the clerical economists, there simply was no das Adam Smith Problem. Articulating a line of reasoning that continues to the present,5 they all maintained that the discipline of political economy was obviously moral because it had emerged out of the discipline of moral philosophy. What follows in the rest of this chapter spells out this train of thought in greater detail, but this is the gist of their defense against political economy’s moralistic despisers. The clerical economists constantly assumed and didactically asserted the compatibility of ethics and political economy, but they never went to great lengths to demonstrate it. As apostles of Scottish common sense philosophy and natural theology, the clerical economists often thought that what was obvious to them must be equally obvious to the cherished American “common man.” In particular they assumed that their readers would be theists and thus would have no problem with the idea that nature’s laws meant, by implicit definition, God’s laws. They also assumed a certain shared American Protestant morality on

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the part of their readers. That is why Wayland could write on the very first page of his textbook: “It is obvious, upon the slightest reflection, that the Creator has subjected the accumulation of the blessings of this life to some determinate laws.”6 Wayland peppered his text with these types of unsubstantiated assertions, which he always introduced with prefatory clauses such as: “It is obvious, upon the slightest reflection, that . . . ” and “Every one must be convinced that . . . ”7 He never offered any justification for these claims, but merely assumed instead that his readers would agree with his starting points and that they therefore did not need a justification. The fact that Wayland’s textbook on political economy was the best-selling one of its kind in the antebellum era indicates that he was correct in this assumption about his audience. Henry Vethake also wanted to define the professional bounds of his science and insulate it from the knotty problems of Christian social ethics. At the very beginning of his 1838 textbook on the subject, The Principles of Political Economy, he wrote: Leaving to the moralist the decision of the question whether many objects of man’s pursuit may not in reality be injurious to him, . . . the political economist regards every thing as useful which is capable of satisfying, in any degree whatever, any of man’s actual wants and desires. . . . Thus spirituous liquors are said to be possessed of utility, . . . notwithstanding that their use may, in most cases, be justly condemned, and the philanthropist, and the Christian, may feel it a duty to make every proper exertion to repress the inconveniences, or mischiefs they occasion.8

To the critic of political economy there seemed to be a troubling inconsistency between the advice the political economist would give and that of “the Christian” or “the philanthropist.” Those who were both Christians and political economists found this dissonance especially problematic. From the pulpit they might condemn certain trades—such as the production and sale of “spirituous liquors”—which from a political-economic point of view were quite profitable, or “useful.” As McVickar had put it bluntly: “The production of material wealth is the only question they [the political economists] admit.”9 The clerical economists had to know how to explain this apparent tension between the advice they gave as political economists and the advice they gave as ministers, especially given that they spoke so confidently, as we will see, about the so-called unity of all truths. The clerical economists did, in fact, end up resolving this dilemma to their own satisfaction, but as the rest of this chapter makes clear, they

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did so in a rather roundabout manner. The short way of describing their resolution is to say that the clerical economists responded to the question of political economy’s morality, the subject most important to many critics, by addressing first the question of political economy’s scientific authority. Although this scientific authority was itself highly debatable, the clerical economists thought that on this issue they had a much stronger case. They then argued from what they were most certain about—the unity of God, the unity of all truths, the veracity of scientific investigation, and their assertion that political economy was a science—to what they were least certain about, namely, political economy’s consistency with traditional Christian morality. To its critics, political economy was a questionable discipline from both a religious and a scientific perspective. The study of economics has never been an exact science, and it was even less exact in its first modern incarnations in the early nineteenth century. As with all nascent disciplines, there was much debate about terms and definitions, scope, methodology, and the locus of authority. The clerical economists in America acknowledged these disputes among the leading thinkers in the field, but generally swept those problematic inconsistencies aside in their efforts to present their discipline as one that spoke the truth with a unified and authoritative voice. Although they were greatly concerned with political economy’s unresolved moral questions, they actually found the scientific objections to their discipline to be the more important of the two and thus addressed them first, fearing that without the authority of a science behind them, they would not have much authority to speak at all. There were, in fact, serious threats to political economy’s scientific credibility from many different quarters. The most pointed was the charge that individual theorists and even whole schools of thought could not reach a consensus as to the very nature, scope, and conclusions of the discipline. For example, one critic in 1838 simply asked: “What is political economy?” and then complained that it was impossible to answer the question because even the supposed authorities in the field “are not agreed in what constitutes the science.”10 To be a legitimate science, political economy needed a unified voice, and that was the one thing that it lacked the most. By contrast, no one questioned the legitimacy of Newtonian physics, the bona fide science of all sciences. Newton’s laws were universal. There was no system to rival those laws, nor even respected differing interpretations of them. Adam Smith, on the other hand, the so-called Newton of political economy,11 was a much more ambiguous figure and his science much more open to disputation. Although every political economist claimed to have

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discovered the truth about modern economic processes, outsiders recognized that their doctrines were very much subject to the contingencies of time and place and—worse still—the intellectual disingenuousness of partisan debate. Even Francis Bowen, the unitarian clerical economist from Harvard, complained that his fellow “[w]riters on Political Economy are unconsciously influenced by a regard to the situation of their own country, the circumstances of its inhabitants, and the particular policy of its rulers.” Then he added unflinchingly that they flat-out “deceive themselves, when they insist on the universal application of the maxims.”12 The axioms of a real science were never dependent on location or sociocultural context for their veracity. The relevance of a so-called axiom of political economy, by contrast, was apparently limited by the particularity of that axiom’s place of origin. The clerical economists also had to defend their science from the stigma of partisan bias. Even when political economists shared a national context, the criticism went, they still could not agree to a common set of definitions for their field or a set of common prescriptions for that nation’s economic welfare. For example, the same reviewer who asked “What is political economy?” also lambasted the self-appointed corps of economic experts for their always confident but never consistent opinions about national economic policy: We find those of one side saying Laissez nous faire, “Let us alone,—pass no law whatever,” . . . and those on the other, saying, that you must fill the statute-book with laws and regulations of this description; and those of each side are equally sweeping, dogmatical, and absolute in their assertions and denials. . . . Can any reflecting man imagine, that science consists in these extravagances?13

Political economy was not, in other words, anything like a science—objective in its methodology and universal in its applications. On the contrary, according to this criticism it was unregulated and subjective in its methodology and nationally particular in its applications. It was therefore not surprising that so many politicians and businessmen disliked and distrusted political economy. The science was either more suited to the needs of other countries (namely, Britain), too lofty and abstract for practical application, or too tainted by partisan rancor to be trusted. Apparently, the “practical men” and “men grown grey in politics and legislation” thought of political economy “as a system of solemn quackery,” “a humbug, and its partisans a set of visionary schemers and theorists.”14 As another commentator quipped: “Only the newest and greenest legislators think of

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looking into their [the political economists’] works for principles. The invocation of their authority excites the smile of men experienced in affairs.”15 According to these reviewers, political economy had almost no authority. From the first assumptions and definitions of the science to its concluding recommendations for national economic policy, there was no consensus and thus no single, authoritative, and scientific voice. Two passages from Henry Vethake’s work illustrate the way the clerical economists navigated these difficulties. In his Introductory Lecture on Political Economy, delivered at Princeton College, January 31, 1831, Vethake acknowledged “a prejudice against it [political economy], in the public mind . . . afloat on the surface of society, and . . . frequently to be heard in conversation, or to be met with in essays and speeches.” He then, in his very organized and analytical style, spent the second half of his lecture listing these so-called prejudices and responding to them systematically. The first points he wanted to address, and the ones he devoted most of his time to, were the attacks on political economy’s credibility as a science. He concluded his lecture by reaffirming political economy’s consistency with the “precepts of revealed religion,” a conspicuous placement that indicates both Vethake’s awareness of his audience’s religious apprehensions about political economy and his desire to lay them to rest. He wanted to leave his audience reassured that the new science was, in fact, consistent with the old faith. But he still devoted most of his time to the first issue of political economy’s questionable scientific credibility—twelve pages to be exact, as opposed to only one on religion.16 In response to the charge that there was no professional consensus among political economists, for example, Vethake shot back that “an attempt is . . . frequently made, to bring the science into disrepute, by exaggerating the real differences of opinion among political economists.” He also acknowledged the repeated criticism that the science was often “objected to as metaphysical,” and stigmatized as “an abstract study.” Vethake’s responses to these objections, incidentally, are verbose, somewhat convoluted, and not worth spelling out in great detail. Generally speaking, however, rather than denying the charge that political economy was either “metaphysical” or “abstract,” Vethake embraced the descriptions. What he wanted to do instead was clarify what “metaphysical” and “abstract” meant, and recast the terms as positive and necessary attributes of any legitimate science. Turning the criticism on its head, he argued that a science deemed metaphysical or abstract, “so far from needing a defense . . . would require no better recommendation.” Yes, political economy was abstract and theoretical, but instead of discrediting

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the young discipline, such claims actually bolstered its scientific authority. As Vethake acknowledged, there was an “objection not seldom urged by the ‘practical men’ against political economy, as ‘all theory.’” “But so is every other science,” he continued, “and to condemn it on that account would, of course, be tantamount to condemnation of every other.” Vethake here attempted to kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, he defended his discipline against the attacks of “the ‘practical men,’” and on the other, he buttressed political economy’s scientific status by placing it in the company of “every other science.” For all of the clerical economists, it was only after having shored up their discipline’s scientific authority that they felt confident enough to confront the lingering ethical questions.17 A second passage, this time from Vethake’s Principles of Political Economy, illustrates this point. In an aside, Vethake indirectly addressed, and in his opinion solved, the question of political economy’s morality by reasserting its scientific legitimacy and therefore its compatibility with universal truth. What inspired Vethake’s tangent was the complex set of issues raised by Thomas Malthus’s thoughts on the poor and his troubling theory of population growth and mass starvation—always a sensitive moral issue for the clerical economists. But instead of being apologetic or defensive, Vethake took the opportunity to go on the offensive and attack some of his discipline’s most prominent enemies. Apparently those critics were not just morally repulsed by Malthus in particular, but objected to the whole field of political economy because it seemed to be “metaphysical and obscure, and as even pregnant with dangerous errour.”18 Vethake recognized that these were not objections to be taken lightly. The first undermined political economy’s scientific credibility, while the second painted it as potentially harmful and therefore immoral. Vethake’s approach to these problems was to tackle the first head-on, which he reasoned would allow the second to take care of itself. In other words, he did not address the moral question as a moral question, but instead bypassed it for what he considered to be the more fundamental, scientific issue. Vethake acknowledged that some of political economy’s earliest doctrines, such as Malthus’s population doctrine, were religiously troubling to say the least, but he also claimed that over time, and “with the progress of investigation, the differing parties [religion and the science of political economy] have . . . been brought much nearer to each other.” Like geology, he went on to argue, a proven and respected science, political economy was traveling a similar path from darkness into light. At “a certain stage of its advancement,” he wrote, political economy “seemed to lead to results incompatible with the certainty

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of our previous knowledge; but which, on its farther advancement, may be cited as a striking illustration of the consistency of truth.” This point about the so-called consistency of truth was both the end point of his argument and his surreptitious way of inserting religion back into the debate. He also used this point as a trump card, for, as he put it, the “consistency of the great system of truth is a proposition which constitutes the main argument for the unity of God, and which is indeed the foundation of natural theology.”19 It is here that his argument ended, for who, he reasoned, would dare challenge the unity of God and the precepts of natural theology? As far-fetched as this conclusion might seem to readers with modern sensibilities, or as much of an evasion of the original ethical issue as it might appear, these points about “the consistency of truth,” “the unity of God,” and “the foundation of natural theology” were what mattered most to Vethake and to the other clerical economists. In their opinion, these were the issues that were most at stake in this debate. Although they did care about answering the questions surrounding political economy’s morality, such questions were of secondary importance to the larger problem that “the truth” of one field of study might not be consistent with “the truth” of another. Thus Vethake’s shifting of the argument was not some calculated debater’s trick, but rather a refocusing of the discussion to what he considered to be the heart of the matter. In his opinion, there were much higher stakes involved than merely whether political economy was a moral science. If—as the logic went—political economy was in fact a science (and the clerical economists thought that it was), and if its premises and conclusions were somehow opposed to Christian theology and morality, then it would appear that science and religion (the study of the book of nature and the study of the book of scripture, to use the language of natural theology) actually led to different conclusions and might be enemies instead of allies. And if this were the case, then the clerical economists had reason to fear that the God of nature and creation would be different from the God of scripture and revelation. As Henry Vethake explained it, there was a grave danger that “the unity of God, . . . which is indeed the foundation of natural theology,” would be irreparably compromised. The clerical economists in the 1820s and 1830s thoroughly believed and wanted others to believe that political economy was the latest and greatest breakthrough in a long line of scientific developments that would shore up their faith in God. In the seventeenth century, Sir Isaac Newton had discovered the harmony and predictability of the physical universe as God had designed it. In the eighteenth century, William Paley expounded on

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the harmony and benevolence of God’s earthly creation. And also in the eighteenth century, Adam Smith had happily demonstrated the glorious harmony of international economic production and exchange—a complex mechanism, to be sure, but no less regular, predictable, and good, according to Smith, than Newton’s universe or Paley’s nature. Smith had created far more problems for religious believers than either Newton or Paley, but the clerical economists argued that he still could be considered an ally. John McVickar’s “Review of Thomas Chalmers’s On Political Economy” made this point as succinctly as it could be made. In McVickar’s view of the world, if a new discipline was a real science, no matter how unorthodox its origins may be—and political economy had some of the most religiously questionable origins up to that time—then it simply had to be in league with revealed religion. “Beginning with an infidel for its founder,” he wrote about Adam Smith, “Political Economy naturally set out with opposition to religious institutions, so that the better part of the community felt themselves called upon to fight against it as an enemy.” But after having been “investigated by sounder minds,” he continued, “it is now recognized as a friend; its dangerous dogmas turn out to be fallacious, while its truths are found to be in strict unison with religion, morals and social order.” McVickar then encouraged his readers that “in this change it is only running the course of all previous human science.” “All began with the stigma of infidelity,” he reminded them, “all have ended with falling into the ranks of religion.”20 One could not ask for a pithier statement of the clerical economists’ faith in natural theology or a more condensed version of their triumphalist narrative in which all the wayward scientific explorers of the world eventually come home to Christian orthodoxy. As McVickar put it elsewhere: “Truth, genuine truth, under all forms, must be one and the same thing.”21 And since political economy was a means of discovering truth, albeit a particular, economic truth, its findings simply could not contradict the other truths of the Christian God. “In its unregenerate state,” McVickar wrote, political economy seemed to be at odds with the Christian tradition. But beginning with Thomas Chalmers, he continued enthusiastically, “the regenerative period of the science has at length arrived,” and religion, he concluded, “which may be said to be but another name for universal truth, has come forth to claim its own.” The science of political economy, in other words, merely because it was a science, fit under the umbrella of universal, religious truth. The advent of Smith’s seemingly irreligious political economy had shaken the foundations for a while but in the end had joined “the ranks of religion”

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with all the other sciences, and for the time being the edifice of Scottish common sense philosophy and natural theology remained intact.22 Henry Vethake constructed essentially the same argument in his aside on Thomas Malthus, poor relief and the compatibility of political economy with Christian morality. Immediately after mentioning “the consistency of truth,” Vethake moved on to “the important lesson” he wanted to hammer home, a lesson he aimed directly at those skeptics of political economy who had started the whole debate, “those individuals who find it easier to utter vituperations of the science of political economy,” as he put it, “than to refute its conclusions by reasoning.” His lesson was simple and returned yet again to his natural-theology mantra. As he reminded the religious critics of political economy: The only effectual method to be adopted by any class of men to persuade the rest of the world to be of their opinion, if their opinion be a correct one, is not to sneer at, and repress by every means in their power the cultivation of any branch of human knowledge which may seem to oppose that opinion, but, on the contrary, to do every thing they can to promote its increased cultivation. The consistency of that great system of truth is a proposition which constitutes the main argument for the unity of God, and which is indeed the foundation of natural theology; and it cannot be too strongly impressed on the mind of every reasoner, or the impiety too firmly realised by him of undervaluing, or affecting to undervalue, the investigations of science, in whatever channel they may be directed.23

It is somewhat difficult to make out the language in the last sentence, but it appears that Vethake actually accused his opponents of “impiety,” as if he honestly meant to say that hostility toward “the investigations of science,” with political economy most in mind here, was tantamount to hostility toward the progress of religion. Such a strong statement illustrates well the depth of these men’s faith in science at this time as well as the relative free reign they granted to the scientific community to pursue their research uninhibited. Vethake argued that the best way to understand the compatibility of scientific truth and religious truth, which demonstrated nothing less than “the unity of God,” was not to oppose and repress scientific investigation but to support and promote it. For all disciplines, no matter how pagan they might first appear, will one day be found to contribute to “the consistency of that great system of truth.” The findings of a true science, Vethake and the other clerical economists fervently believed, could do no other.

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Francis Wayland articulated the exact same argument. “Thus far, every discovery of science and every invention in the arts,” he wrote, “have uttered their voice in favor of the Bible.” “A striking illustration of the truth of the general principle to which I refer,” he continued, “may be found in the history of political economy.” As he wrote: This science has been, to say the least, most successfully cultivated by men who had no belief in the Christian religion. And yet, reasoning from unquestionable facts in the history of man, they have incontrovertibly proved that the precepts of Jesus Christ, in all their simplicity, point out the only rules of conduct, in obedience to which, either nations or individuals can become either rich or happy. So far as science has gone, then, every new truth in physics or in morals has furnished a new argument for the authenticity of revelation. Thus will it be to the end. Philosophy herself will at last show the principles of the religion of Jesus Christ so legibly written on every thing else which the Creator’s hand has formed, that it will be as impossible to deny the truth of the Scriptures as the law of gravitation.24

Wayland began by talking about universal morality, with which, he maintained, political economy was consistent. But Wayland’s goal in this passage was not to prove political economy’s morality. There were bigger issues here, of which political economy was only a part. What was at stake, as Wayland made clear, was the “authenticity of revelation,” or the ongoing compatibility of the Christian religion with the discoveries of scientific investigation. He and the other clerical economists did want to defend the moral and religious credibility of their discipline, but they were more interested in defending their faith, and in particular the relevance of their faith in an increasingly “disenchanted” world, to use Max Weber’s terminology.25 These triumphalist narratives of political economy’s eventual sacralization raise two final subjects that deserve attention: one that concludes this chapter on “Moral Problems, Scientific Solutions,” and another that is central to the next chapter on “Moral Man, Moral Economy.” The latter is the concept of “utility” and its tortured career in antebellum America. The former is Thomas Chalmers, a pivotal figure in political economy’s journey from darkness into light. As one of his contemporaries described him, Thomas Chalmers (1780– 1847) was “the man who began that baptism, so to speak, of political economy with Christianity, which was the main thing needful to bring about its regeneration.”26 Chalmers was therefore the British precursor to the American clerical economists. He saw the same problem that his American

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successors saw—the apparent incompatibility of Christianity and political economy—and he engaged in the same project of bringing them together. As Chalmers had lamented: There are two classes of writers whose prevailing topics stand intimately connected with the philosophy of human affairs, but who, in almost all their habitudes of thinking, have hitherto maintained an unfortunate distance from each other. There are political economists, who do not admit Christianity as an element into their speculations; and there are Christian philanthropists who do not admit political science as an element into theirs.27

From his perspective, both groups worked for the same goal, but both refused to listen to the other side, apparently because of the dissimilarities they sensed in the other’s presuppositions about the world and in their differing prescriptions for social betterment. Chalmers therefore took it on himself to reconcile the two and force them to learn from each other, and he was the first to do so in the Anglo-American world. Much of Chalmers’s career was devoted to the task of thinking through how religion and economics did and should relate. Born in Scotland in 1780, Chalmers was ordained as a Presbyterian pastor in 1803, and from 1819 to 1823 he ministered in one of the poorest parishes in the entire country, the St. John’s parish in Glasgow. While there he rejected all compulsory poor relief and developed an elaborate church-run and morally paternalistic system of his own. The experience also inspired him to write on the subject: The Application of Christianity to the Commercial and Ordinary Affairs of Life in 1820 and a three-volume treatise, The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns, published between 1821 and 1826. From 1823 to 1828 he occupied the chair of moral philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, and from 1828 to 1843 he was the professor of divinity at the University of Edinburgh. In 1832, reflecting these experiences, he published his more academic work, On Political Economy in Connexion with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society.28 All of Chalmers’s writings bear a remarkable similarity to the works of the American clerical economists, but did not directly impact them as much as one would suspect. There are two reasons for this. The first is that while there is an apparent overlap in the general subject that both Chalmers and the American clerical economists addressed, Chalmers confronted problems and proposed solutions that were specific to the circumstances of his nineteenth-century British context. In particular, he sought to solve the problem of urban squalor with the robust charitable activity of

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the organized parish system. America had neither this problem, although there were cities and growing industries, nor this means of dealing with it. John McVickar, for example, who lauded Chalmers’s book On Political Economy for having inaugurated “the regenerative period of the science,” also added: The great practical question to be solved in England . . . is, how to meet and keep down that swelling amount of pauperism which is rising as a flood among them. . . . Of this, in our wide, fertile, and therefore prosperous country, we know nothing. With us starving men are objects of compassion; but with them, of terror. This is a difference, however, not of humanity, but of condition.29

He therefore predicted that Chalmers’s work would be “differently regarded in the two countries,” and he was correct. As historian Mark Noll explains, although “he was the Colossus of British religious life in his era . . . Chalmers never made more than a ripple in the United States because by the second decade of the nineteenth century the United States—politically, socially, economically, intellectually—was no longer Britain.”30 The two countries were simply too different for Chalmers’s specific investigations and prescriptions on political economy to find a devoted following in America. It is also incorrect to say that Chalmers had an impact on the American clerical economists when it came to even the more general subject of religious ethics and political economy. Although they were inspired by him, the clerical economists were not his intellectual disciples. Francis Wayland, for example, admired Chalmers so much that he authored a hagiographic memoir of him.31 It was also the last book Wayland ever wrote. But his respect for the man does not mean that Wayland, or any of the other clerical economists, adopted Chalmers’s ideas simply because they came from Chalmers. He was indeed the first person to “evangelicalize”32 the religiously problematic discipline of political economy, but this is not a scenario in which there was a British intellectual leader and mere American followers. What matters most here is that both Chalmers and the American clerical economists were parts of a shared Anglo-American intellectual community. Thus when they addressed the same intellectual problem, they came to similar conclusions because the powerful dogmas of natural theology and Scottish common sense philosophy could dictate no other outcome. There were differences in the social contexts of Britain and America, and thus differences in the specifics of the challenges they faced and the solutions they proposed for them, but all were agreed on the general compatibility of political economy and their Christian faith. Although it had questionable

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beginnings, political economy was a science that human beings could use to discover the laws of God and demonstrate the goodness of God. The American clerical economists were therefore happy that Chalmers had come to these conclusions before them, but they would have reached, and were reaching, that same destination without him.

chapter five

Utilitarian Conclusions Moral Man, Moral Economy

t h i s c h a p t e r addresses no simple subject. This is also, in some ways, the exceedingly complicated heart of the matter when trying to understand how the clerical economists synthesized their Christian faith with Adam Smith’s political economy. The last chapter dealt with how the originally sinful science of political economy had been washed clean through the work of natural theology, and brought back safely and triumphantly into the Christian fold, where it helped maintain intellectual and social stability. In this chapter the narrative is neither as linear nor as clean; and although the clerical economists were thoroughly “assured” that they favored Adam Smith’s science detailing the pattern of economic progress and civilization, they used convoluted reasoning to arrive at that conclusion. As the chapter title suggests, the clerical economists believed that the economic mechanism was a moral one and that human economic actors, instead of being sinfully motivated by their passions, were moral as well. They arrived at these conclusions, however, by drawing on two different intellectual sources, one that they were conscious and approving of and one that they were not. At the heart of the matter was the clerical economists’ equivocation about one single word: utility. John McVickar, for example, complained that “Political Economy as a science has been too long monopolized by utilitarians as to this world and skeptics as to the next,”1 two groups from which he wanted to dissociate both himself and his science. All of the clerical economists, in fact, tried to walk a fine line. As political economists they wanted to deal exclusively with questions of utility, but at the same time distance themselves from the British utilitarians, whose unabashed materialism and secularism 73

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they found repulsive. As Henry Vethake had put it, and as all the clerical economists agreed, political economy’s proper domain was, in fact, “utility” and not morality. They therefore felt that they could limit themselves to such questions when writing on political economy, and they were relieved to do so—“leaving to the moralist the decision” of whether various trades and transactions were ethical. But immediately after using the word utility, Vethake sought to distance himself from the suspected moral callousness of the British utilitarians. The fact that the political economist “employs the word utility in reference to man as he is, and not as he ought to be,” he wrote defensively, does not mean that he “adopts a low standard of morals, or is indifferent to such [moral] improvement.”2 In other words, he wanted to show that as a Christian he still cared about ethical questions, but when speaking as a political economist, he was happily excused from addressing them. This made for many convenient omissions in the clerical economists’ texts, but left unresolved the question of whether their whole discipline dealt with a godless and immoral subject. The clerical economists’ purposeful oversights and epistemological schizophrenia were only compounded by the fact that they were, in reality, utilitarians. They just did not want to call themselves such. As Francis Bowen wrote of Francis Wayland’s textbook on moral philosophy: it “may be highly valuable in the veriest utilitarian sense.”3 What Bowen meant by this is that Wayland’s text would prove imminently useful in instilling morals into the future leaders of the American republic. This, after all, was the raison d’ˆetre of these Protestant educators—the self-appointed guardians of national stability. Fill in the minds of the college-educated with the truths of Scottish common sense philosophy and natural theology, and the young republic will remain secure on its foundation of virtue and intelligence, and insulated from the skepticism and radicalism of Europe. But the clerical economists’ unspoken utilitarianism also extended beyond their pedagogy. Like most Americans, they had a passion for seeing things work. As historian Daniel Rodgers elaborates: “witness Tom Paine’s love affair with iron bridges, Jefferson’s consuming zeal for plows and architectural proportions, and Franklin’s inexhaustible stream of projects for the improvement of himself and his countrymen.” Rodgers therefore calls the antebellum revulsion of utilitarianism “a puzzle, and no simple one at that,”4 and he is right to do so. America’s love affair with utility and happiness but hatred of its philosophy was a complicated relationship to be sure, and one not easy to disentangle. The same was true in Great Britain and the answers no easier to come by. Historian David Brion Davis observes in early nineteenth-century Britain

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an “extraordinary conjunction of two seemingly antithetical realms of language, thought, and rhetoric: the evangelical appeals to sin, guilt, retribution, and deliverance . . . and a highly utilitarian analysis of punishment, nutrition, land use, labor incentives, productivity, and revenue.” Elie Hal´evy likewise describes the spirit of British individualism as “a mixture whose ingredients are often mingled beyond the possibility of analysis, a compound of Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism.”5 These scholarly confessions of the “extraordinary conjunction” of these two schools of thought, being “beyond the possibility of analysis,” are accurate and comforting to those who still attempt such an analysis. It is simply impossible to sort out these complicated strands of thought (sometimes separate, sometimes fused) in either the American or the British context. And as Boyd Hilton writes: “Since many thinkers oscillated ambivalently between the two modes, it would be futile to make the distinction too rigorously” in the first place.6 Again, many evangelicals simply were utilitarians—although “ambivalently” so—whether they acknowledged it or not. The two schools of thought, in other words, were more often in conjunction than they were in conflict. As for the clerical economists, although they might have hated utilitarianism’s rejection of the transcendent for the materialistic, when it came to the matters of this world—which was the subject of their new science—they arrived at the same utilitarian destination. This is precisely what historian Boyd Hilton says about Thomas Chalmers and other Victorian evangelicals. As he puts it, one of his “main arguments” is “that an evangelical, backwardlooking pessimism could lead men to the same competitive policy conclusions as growth oriented optimism” with utilitarian origins. As Hilton also explains, his analysis “will make the attempt, and will suggest for a start that if, in the early nineteenth century, many men shared a predominantly mechanistic and individualistic cast of thought—this probably owed more to the vague but diffusive sway of evangelicalism than to Bentham.” Evangelicalism and utilitarianism, in other words, although seemingly incompatible, could be easily combined, and the most important point of contact was this emphasis on both the mechanism and the individual. It was also on these two subjects that the clerical economists were the most consistent in their conclusions but confused in their reasoning. As self-conscious Christians but self-deceived utilitarians, the clerical economists “oscillated ambivalently,” as Hilton puts it, “between the two modes” and in their answers to these fundamental questions.7 Regarding the mechanism, the clerical economists contended that once correctly understood, the international economy would be seen to be every bit as intricate and beautiful as the physical universe which God had surely

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created and whose glorious symmetry Sir Isaac Newton had discovered. On this point, in fact, the clerical economists responded with unanimity: the workings of national economies and international trade was a mechanism of divine origin and political economy the scientific study of that mechanism as created by God and discovered by Adam Smith. Every now and then one of them would make a confusing statement about the supposed amorality of the mechanism, but in general all saw it as good. Henry Vethake, for example, once defended political economy against its moralistic critics by saying that the materialistic nature of the subject put it in the company of the other physical sciences, none of which dealt with moral issues. Should, he asked sardonically, “the pursuits of the astronomer or chemist be condemned as vicious in their tendency, because, in observing the phenomena, and investigating the laws, of material nature, they take no cognizance of the categories of right and wrong”?8 Where, in other words, could ethical questions possibly fit into the study of the physical laws of nature or the medical laws of the human body? But Vethake’s opinion here was the exception and not the rule. Most often the clerical economists talked about the economic mechanism as coming from the hand of God and thus naturally embodying his divine wisdom and goodness. As with Adam Smith, the clerical economists grounded their love for commerce and its science on the seemingly unshakable truths of nature: the nature of mankind, the nature of creation, and—to the clerical economists but not Smith—the apparent God-ordained symmetry that existed between them. From the point of view of political economy, human beings existed to consume, and in many ways this was the anthropological starting place of their science. “Every man in the country is a consumer,” Francis Wayland wrote. “Without consuming he could not sustain life a day. He must consume the food which he eat [sic], the clothes which he wears, and the dwelling that shelters him.” But beyond meeting these fundamental needs, there was a second category that Wayland called “consumption for the gratification of desire.” In the first category was included all the expenditures necessary to sustain life (food, clothing, shelter), as well as those necessary to increase productive value. When one consumes to gratify a desire, however, “the value of a product is commonly destroyed, without the anticipation of the creation of any other product by which it is to be replaced,” such as “when we expend money for shows, for mere delicacies of the table, for luxuries of dress.” In all of these cases, Wayland continued rather clinically, “our only recompense consists in the pleasure experienced in the organ of sense.”9

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This does not mean, however, that Wayland disapproved of a hedonistic consumption to gratify desires, and this is where he showed his unspoken utilitarianism most clearly. “The various objects of desire,” he wrote, were the very things by “which our happiness may be promoted,” and the promotion of human happiness, as he understood it, was one of the chief ends of commerce. There was always the danger of licentiousness, of course, and individuals could slip into gluttony, drunkenness, and greed, but Wayland successfully avoided these issues by yet again citing the separation of moral questions from purely political-economic ones. The “dignity of the [human] race not belonging to the province of the political economist,” he contended, “we shall not consider the subject in this point of view.” In his opinion, “It belongs to the teacher of ethics, to show in which mode of expenditure a man may best secure his future happiness, and act most worthily of the moral nature with which he is endowed. The political economist looks upon the various modes of expenditure, simply as they affect the wealth of the individual, and of the public.”10 How Wayland, who rejected utilitarianism, did not see his own words as utilitarian themselves is beyond explanation. How he and the other clerical economists explained these words theologically—perhaps unaware of the overlap with utilitarianism’s language and rationale—is a bit clearer. Paradoxically and controversially, especially in the young virtue-based American republic, Wayland and the other clerical economists did not condemn the life of luxury. From their perspective, pursuing luxury was not only a necessary evil in that the economy partially depended on it, but also a positive good in that by doing so, individuals were acting on an inviolable impulse of their God-given human nature. When an individual attained a luxury, he also therefore experienced a greater degree of human actualization. “Every one must be convinced,” Wayland wrote, “that the happiness of every man is increased in proportion as he is furnished with the greatest number of these objects of desire.”11 Again, this was the chief and good end of commerce. Such an end was as worldly and hedonistic as possible, but it did demonstrate, on one level, the goodness of God in creating such a mechanism. If the mechanism allowed for this hedonistic attainment of human happiness—as opposed to Ricardo’s and Malthus’s dire predictions, for example—how could it be considered anything but good? It might not lead people to salvation, but it did not lead them to starvation either. On a theological note, and away from the worldly language of utilitarianism, it bears mentioning that the clerical economists always spoke more about the Creation than the Fall, and thus always emphasized human

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beings’ God-given goodness rather than their postlapsarian sinfulness. In other words, whenever they spoke of the human impulse to seek out the materialistic ends of comfort, riches, and happiness, they always described both that impulse’s origins and its fulfillment as good—as a desire given by God to all people. The clerical economists never indicated that such an impulse might itself be rotten to the core and have its origin in the less admirable sources of pride, vanity, greed, envy, gluttony, or lust. As we will see in the final section on the “adapted,” both the pastoral moralists and the clerical economists did believe that the economic impulse could become sinful, but only after it had transgressed its natural and good limits. An individual could consume food and wine and collect material possessions up to a certain point, for example, and still be living within the bounds of propriety. But as soon as that individual went beyond those bounds and consumed or collected too much, he erred and had ventured into the realm of gluttony, drunkenness, or greed. As always, though, the clerical economists never raised such issues when they wrote on political economy. Always wanting to show the goodness of the economic mechanism, they also emphasized the goodness of its economic actors, and the harmonious and obviously Goddesigned combination of the two in a hedonistically ever-improving grand structure. Starting with the supposedly unassailable truth that human beings are most fulfilled (made happiest) when they act on their God-given impulses to obtain “these objects of desire,” the clerical economists then sought to explain the harmony that existed between God’s creation of the natural world and God’s special creation of humankind. To explain this in modern economic terms, mankind, as designed by God, created the demand for the necessities and luxuries of life. Correspondingly, the earth, or “the globe” as Wayland called it, provided the resources to supply all of those demands. The only apparent problem was the fact that “but few of these objects, every one of which is necessary to the happiness of every individual, should be produced except in particular districts” of the planet. Thus, in the absence of international free trade, every individual is left somewhat unfulfilled in that he is not able to obtain all of the objects necessary to gratify “his innocent desires.”12 As Wayland went on to make clear, though, what appeared to be an insurmountable logistical problem was in reality neither insurmountable nor a problem, but was instead all part of God’s glorious plan. “Every part of the globe,” he wrote, “possesses peculiar advantages for the production of something; but no part possesses advantages for the production of everything.”

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All of this, Wayland argued, was the Creator’s intention: the worldwide division of efficient productive capacities, along with human beings’ universally shared tastes, desires, and wants. As Francis Lieber put it: The physical desires of men are remarkably uniform in all, and multifarious in each individual. All palates relish saccharine substances. The capacity of the earth, to satisfy these uniform and multifarious desires, is remarkably diversified over the globe, and limited to districts. Few countries produce sugar. This apparent incongruity reveals the wisdom and goodness of our Maker. Out of it arise exchange and civilization. Territorial division of labour, is still more important than individual. It is a truth of great importance for natural theology.13

On the one hand, we have mankind’s “remarkably uniform” physical desires, such as the love for sugar. Apparently—and here the clerical economists depended very much on natural theology as they indicate—the Creator had endowed individuals not only with the same five senses but also with shared tastes about what is pleasurable and appealing to those senses and what is not. The clerical economists, in other words, simply assumed that all human beings, regardless of cultural differences, agreed about what constitutes beauty, what sounds good, what feels good, what smells good, and what tastes good. The dilemma lay in the fact that human beings’ universal tastes and desires could never be met by what their limited localities could produce. But, agreeing with Wayland, instead of being a problem, as Lieber put it: “This apparent incongruity reveals the wisdom and goodness of our Maker.” The situation that would seem to lead to mankind’s ongoing frustration and unfulfillment actually illustrated God’s benevolence. The Creator had designed mankind with a uniform set of desires but also fashioned the world in such a way to meet those desires. There was, in other words, no human demand that creation could not supply, and the vital link that connected the two was the natural, beautiful, God-given, and intricate mechanism of efficient local production and global free trade. There was only one hitch in this scheme of things, and herein lay the clerical economists’ polemical point. For this good, natural, and God-ordained mechanism to operate properly, and for the world to progress to a stage of shared commercial civilization and, more importantly, to world peace, the nations of the world must be allowed to trade freely with one another. “Free trade,” added Lieber in all seriousness, “is the gospel of peace and good will, carried out in the world of exchange. Protection is short-sighted selfishness.”14 And, as John McVickar argued, free trade was nothing less

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than God’s will. “To forbid trade among nations,” he wrote, “is, therefore, a very unwise thing; but it is also a very wicked thing, for it is contrary to the will of GOD.”15 And there you have it—the ultimate sacralization of Adam Smith’s economic order. According to both Smith and his American Christian disciples, the developing economic mechanism existed for humanity and humanity for the economic mechanism. For the clerical economists, however, it was a perfect fit that only a benevolent Creator could possibly have arranged, and one that only the most ignorant of people (Smith’s detested mercantilists) would not recognize. As McVickar went on to explain, “oscillat[ing] ambivalently”16 between his beloved Christian natural theology and his detested but unconscious utilitarianism, “the will of GOD” showed itself most clearly in the very design of the earth and its human inhabitants. The diverse productive capabilities of the nations and the way in which those nations were linked together by the waterways of the world obviously demonstrated the goodness of the Creator. “For what other reason do you suppose has he [God] given to different countries such different soils and climate and productions,” he wrote, but that they should freely exchange with each other, and thus all be happier and more comfortable? Why has he made great rivers to flow through large countries? and why has he separated continents by seas and oceans, but that they might be able by means of ships to carry and exchange the produce of distant places and countries? . . . Such is the blessing of seas and oceans, and such no doubt was the intention of our Heavenly Father, in forming our earth out of land and water; not to separate nations, as some think, and make them strangers and enemies to each other, but to unite them like brothers—to make them mutually useful, by each exchanging its own productions for those of others, and thus to make all happier by giving them more enjoyments and more comforts than they could otherwise have had.17

To the clerical economists, God’s wise and benevolent purpose of worldwide materialistic fulfillment seemed evident in the very design of commerce and the globe. Such was the cosmic beauty of trade. Never mind that the very goal of the commercial mechanism—that “all be happier and more comfortable . . . by giving them more enjoyments and more comforts than they could otherwise have had”—was hedonistic and utilitarian to the core, it was still a good goal and one consistent with the cherished tenets of natural theology. Problematic questions about the moral behavior of individuals within the economic mechanism still lingered; but presuming to see the big picture, as the clerical economists did, from this God’s-eye point of view, who could

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doubt the goodness of his divine plan for humankind and the Creation? God had designed the world such that its nations would be linked together by trade. Human beings in all cultures and nations supposedly desired the same things—sugar, wine, wool, tea, and so on—but they almost always had to trade to get those things, specializing in the refinement of a few finished products that they could make with the greatest efficiency and then exchanging them for the largest amount of foreign goods in return. It was therefore in a people’s or a nation’s interest, once they had specialized their productive energies, to maintain peaceful relationships with their trading neighbors. Thus, according to the clerical economists’ ethical calculations, the doctrine of free trade and the discipline of political economy that preached it were thoroughly consistent with the values and goals of Christian morality. What could be more Christian, after all, than world peace? Jesus told his followers to love their neighbors as themselves. And “what religion teaches authoritatively to men,” John McVickar argued, “this [political economy] teaches persuasively. It shews that to be their interest, which religion has shewn to be their duty.” The followers of Jesus, on the one hand, were obliged to love their neighbors out of obedience to the commands of their savior and out of a Christ-like disregard for themselves and their own interests. The followers of political economy, on the other hand, were similarly commanded to love their neighbors (or at least not to make war on them), but were told to do so for exactly the opposite reasons. Instead of appealing to the Christian ethic of selflessness and the potential sacrifice of one’s personal interests, political economists argued that loving one’s neighbor would actually help further one’s interests, either individually or corporately. Thus Christianity and political economy agreed about the goodness and desirability of peace and neighbor-love even if they disagreed about the source from which this moral principle sprang. For the one it was duty, for the other, self-interest, a key distinction that will come up again in the section on the “adapted” pastoral moralists. “While Christianity, with its holy precepts would root out from the hearts of men those selfish and malevolent passions whence all wars and fightings come,” McVickar argued, this noble science [of political economy] seeks the next great victory. It inclines them to drop the sword from their hands, by demonstrating to them, that they are about to plunge it into their own bowels. If Political Economy is listened to, this it would effect. It would make nations and states a brotherhood of love.18

Francis Wayland made the exact same point about the providential confluence of Christian duty and macroeconomic self-interest. After giving specific

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examples of how “every part of the globe possesses peculiar advantages for the production of something”—flour from New York, coffee from Cuba, and so on—he summarized: And the final cause of all this is evident. God intended that men should live together in friendship and harmony. By thus multiplying indefinitely their wants, and creating only in particular localities, the objects by which those wants can be supplied, he intended to make them all necessary to each other; and thus to render it no less the interest than the duty of every one, to live in amity with all the rest.19

All of the clerical economists contended that the doctrines of political economy, far from being hostile to the doctrines of Christianity, were actually in conformity with them, or at the most a different means of reaching the same end. As Francis Lieber put it: “Free trade is the principle of the gospel of peace and good will, carried out in the world of exchange.” Similarly, Henry Vethake concluded that “the whole spirit of political economy, like that of christianity [sic] itself, is a spirit of peace and good will to all mankind.”20 And if someone should wonder, McVickar added, “how it happens that this accordance should thus happily exist between religion and science . . . I can only answer by referring you to the will of that wise and good Providence which has made our duty and interest the same.” McVickar concluded that the benevolent harmony of these two seemingly opposite impulses— Christian selflessness and economic self-interest—should not be surprising. Both of them had come from the hand of the same God, and in particular the clerical economists’ God of natural theology. “Truth, genuine truth,” McVickar firmly believed, “under all its forms, must be one and the same thing.”21 Christianity dealt with the truths of the heart and soul; political economy with the truths of national and international economic organization. But while the two were apparently far apart, the clerical economists wanted to prove as clearly as possible the unity and harmony of God’s glorious design, from the smallest scale to the largest. When speaking strictly as political economists they concerned themselves with the larger issues: “the globe,” nations, international trade, and the worldwide “brotherhood of love” that could exist if only free trade and the division of labor were universally adopted. Thus whenever the clerical economists spoke about the actual morality of commerce and political economy, they always meant morality on an international scale among countries rather than on a personal scale among individuals. They always talked, in other words, about world peace and national

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prosperity, instead of the personal ethical problems of everyday business interactions. In fact, they purposely avoided those small-scale and face-to-face matters, claiming that they were not their concern as economists. What did concern them was the big picture—the national picture, the international picture, or even the cosmic or heavenly picture of the great and supposedly moral economic mechanism of global trade. John McVickar spoke glowingly about political economy as “the moral instructor of nations,” in complete harmony with the dictates of Christianity. What “religion reproves as wrong,” he wrote, “Political Economy rejects as inexpedient—what religion condemns as contrary to duty and virtue, Political Economy proves to be equally opposed to peace, good order, and permanent prosperity of the community.” Thus, ironically, “the all powerful considerations of selfinterest” were working hand in glove with the principles of Christianity to bring about the same undeniable good end of world peace.22 John McVickar had likewise called political economy “the redeeming science of modern times—the regenerating principle that in connexion with the spirit of Christianity, is at work in the civilized governments of the world.” “It is to states,” he concluded, “what religion is to individuals”—and there are important distinctions here. As always, McVickar was triumphalistic about his new discipline. Far from being the despised “dismal science,” it was instead the vaunted “redeeming science of modern times.” Political economy fit the modern age perfectly, and it could in fact “save” the age from itself if only people would listen to its gospel of free trade and the division of labor. It had the authority of a science, addressed the macro-problems of economic inefficiency, and—to the clerical economists anyway—solved those problems beyond the shadow of a doubt. And furthermore, its solutions were happy ones. Contrary to the gloomy predictions of Malthus and Ricardo, the clerical economists forecasted an emerging utilitarian paradise of individual happiness and world peace. But still, political economy was not synonymous with Christianity. It worked “in connexion with the spirit of Christianity,” McVicar wrote, and was thus obviously compatible with that spirit instead of hostile to it, but the two were not one and the same, and the most important difference was again that of scale. Religion was for “individuals”; political economy was for “states.”23 To McVickar and the other clerical economists, political economy was suitably baptized with Christian morality, but it was always a large-scale systemic morality that existed among the somewhat abstract entities called nations. The promises of political economy in this realm were all very exciting to this group of educators in the new republic. If the discipline was indeed

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“the moral instructor of nations,” they wanted it to be the moral instructor of their nation. And if Adam Smith had truly written what amounted to a guidebook for understanding the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, they wanted their young nation to follow Smith’s advice and share in the spoils. Instruction in political economy, the clerical economists firmly believed, would secure to all free Americans “and to their country, all the blessings which temporal prosperity can bestow—liberty, peace, and abundance.”24 Although the doctrines of political economy, if followed, might entail some drawbacks—heightened competitiveness, for example, dehumanizing industrial work, and a greater inequality of wealth—the clerical economists were nevertheless confident that the science would work miracles for the nation and for the world, boosting national productivity and riches and encouraging international peace. Part II, which follows, addresses how the clerical economists failed to deal with those feared drawbacks: the corrosion of virtue in a market-capitalist society and the creation of a miserable and potentially permanent working class. It also points to parts III and IV on the “opposed” contrarians and the “adapted” pastoral moralists, the antebellum Christians who treated these issues with the care and seriousness they deserved.

part ii Unresolved Questions

i n s t e a d of a conclusion, part 2 is meant to be more of a transition between part I on the “assured” clerical economists and parts III and IV on the “opposed” contrarians and the “adapted” pastoral moralists. The two chapters in this part deal principally with the clerical economists, but are meant to highlight the ways in which their utilitarian conclusions about Christian ethics and market capitalism were ultimately inconclusive, leaving significant ethical questions unanswered. These two chapters explain both why and how the clerical economists left those problems unresolved, and point toward those two groups among the antebellum Christian faithful who did attempt to resolve them.

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The Inconsistently Virtuous Economy

i t i s telling that although the clerical economists cared deeply about the problem of individual economic morality, they barely touched on the subject in their textbooks. In general, they subordinated ordinary people and dayto-day issues to the big intellectual picture: the stages of a nation’s economic development, and the large-scale production, exchange, distribution and consumption of wealth. They intended their textbooks to lay down the general laws that economic actors had to know and obey if they were going to succeed in business, but they never went into detail about what it meant for ground-level merchants to compete both successfully and ethically. Employing a division of labor of their own, the clerical economists acknowledged issues of individual morality, but left it to, in Francis Wayland’s words, “the teacher of ethics, to show in which mode of expenditure a man may best secure his future happiness, and act most worthily of the moral nature with which he is endowed.”1 Significantly, Wayland made these remarks in response to the difficult question about when the God-given impulse to gratify one’s desires in commerce crossed the line and became the immoral passion of cupidity or licentiousness. Just as the natural desire for food and drink could become excessive and verge into gluttony and drunkenness, for example, so the natural desire for worldly goods could become excessive and degenerate into greed or luxurious self-indulgence. But as always, when confronted with this problem, Wayland and the other clerical economists backed down. The clerical economists’ avoidance of ethical questions in their texts and lectures did not mean that they were uninterested in them. Instead their 87

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silence indicates an epistemological schizophrenia in the way that they dealt with the moral problems inherent in a developing market-capitalist economy. Take, for example, Wayland’s statement that “it belongs to the teacher of ethics, to show” what is moral in business and what is not. He and the other clerical economists were happy to allow the professional rules of their emerging discipline to prohibit them from commenting on these religious and moral questions whenever they wrote as political economists. As Henry Vethake explained, when “investigating the laws of material nature, they [scientists such as political economists] take no cognizance of the categories of right and wrong.” Thus, “whether many objects of man’s pursuit may not in reality be injurious to him” was up to “the moralist” to determine.2 The clerical economists generally did leave such questions to “the moralist,” but there were some instances when they also dared to address them in their texts, and in those cases what little they said spoke volumes about their underlying assumptions. Some of those assumptions one would expect from thinkers in this era, but others were quite novel, and perhaps once properly understood would have been surprising to the clerical economists themselves. Unsurprisingly, when the clerical economists confronted the dangers of economic immorality, they always couched their proposed solutions in the tried-and-true vocabulary of Christian republicanism. The problem was never with the economic system, in other words, but always with the character or spirit of the people who worked within it. The solution therefore lay with them as well. What is novel is that the clerical economists focused almost as much on intelligence as they did on virtue—an emphasis that marked a notable shift in the republican rhetoric of the day. At the time of the American Revolution, republicans tended to think of virtue as the key remedy for their wartime troubles. Virtue, after all, was supposed to be the polar opposite of corruption, luxury, and self-interest—all of the vices that could undermine a republic. As the nineteenth century progressed, however, the heirs of the Revolution, and especially these Protestant educators, placed more and more stock in the nation’s collective intelligence, as well as the unfettered operation of self-interest. Virtue still mattered, but the intelligence that came from a proper education, such as an education in political economy and other practical subjects, took more and more precedence as the nineteenth century progressed. This knowledge of how the world actually works was now thought to be requisite to the nation’s continued well-being and good governance. “Our republican institutions,” Henry Vethake wrote, “are

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built on the foundation of the assumed capacity of the people generally for self-government. Where ignorance prevails, this capacity will be wanting.” Intelligence, in other words, was becoming central to this all-important capacity of “self-government.” “In no other country,” wrote Alonzo Potter, “are the links so short and few that connect the thoughts of the people with the acts of government. Thinking and acting go together.”3 A republican government, as Potter explained, was a virtual reflection of the collective intelligence of its people. And since taxation and trade were some of the most important issues of the day, the American people had to understand them if they were to choose their representatives responsibly. Having come from the people, political leaders were supposed to speak on their behalf. If the electors were ignorant about economic issues such as “the theories of money, and of banking, of finance, and of taxation,” then so would be their elected officials.4 This was why the clerical economists thought that a popular knowledge of their discipline was so vital to the health of the young nation. We “are, and long have been, warm advocates for early and universal teaching in Political Economy,” Potter wrote. “We would have its fundamental truths embodied in Primers,” he added, “reduced into Catechisms, interwoven into Narratives, mixed up with the mother’s milk, as it were, of the nutriment of the rising generation, and nourishing them into the manly strength and stature of the knowledge and duties and true interests of a good citizen.” A thorough instruction in political economy, in other words, made more informed voters and thus better Americans. Henry Vethake even went so far as to admonish that “every student who hears me ought to feel himself bound to direct a portion of his attention to the science [of political economy], of which we are now speaking.” Those who did not, he warned, “will necessarily fail in the proper performance of the peculiar and honourable functions assigned him in society.”5 For John McVickar, an education in political economy was not just a matter of personal duty and civic responsibility, but of national security as well. As he expressed it in 1830, political economy was “no longer a holiday pursuit, an innocent lucubration for the curious and investigating, but it is an engine of power and a science of safety.” “Gentlemen,” he reminded his listeners, “our political horizon is not without its clouds. They rise in the South, they darken in the West—they lower upon us at home, in the ignorance of too many of our legislators, and the evil plottings of the fool, who hath said in his heart there is no God.” As McVickar made clear, there was at least as much to worry over in the new nation as there was to be

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excited about. The republic could come apart at the seams, or ignorant legislators might shipwreck America’s economic and political stability with their unwise policies. “Wherein lies our safety?” McVickar asked. “Which is the anchor on which we depend, to ride out the political storm, that may one day come?” But interestingly, when it came to an answer, McVickar departed from the traditional republican mantra. Instead of appealing to virtue, that triedand-true republican panacea, he argued that the “want of science, rather than of virtue, has stamped the errors of our policy.”6 In the minds of the clerical economists, science was becoming more important than even virtue for the ongoing stability of the republic. As McVickar continued: “I cannot but look upon the science I now recommend to you, as the only author of our future safety, the only ballast that will keep steady the vessel of the state.” Politics was always going to be a tumultuous endeavor, but with the pure light of political economy to guide them, legislators would have less reason to disagree. “Science,” after all, “knows no side, is conversant with no party, . . . seeks nothing but truth, and dreads nothing but error.” And political economy, McVickar insisted, was a science, the new science of society—objective, enlightened, and a firm foundation for the policies of the republic.7 McVickar still believed strongly in republican values, though, even as he wanted to make both politics and education more practical and scientific. Virtue and intelligence were still, in his opinion, the twin pillars of republican strength. As he himself acknowledged, his almost-utopian vision of a nation governed by a more economically informed electorate also “presupposes virtue in the people.” Virtue, in other words, still mattered. The republic had depended on it in the past and would continue to depend on it in the future.8 But when he and other clerical economists spoke about virtue in their writings on political economy, their thoughts on its role in an increasingly market-capitalist society were complex and not always consistent. The clerical economists were consistent in that they all still cared about virtue and thought of it as fundamental to the health of the republic, but they differed in their definitions of virtue and how they believed it related to economic activity. The most serious allegation, as usual, was the charge that virtue and economic activity were diametrically opposed—that an individual could not engage in commerce and hope to maintain a virtuous character. This, one could say, was the theory that wealth and virtue were inversely related—that the abundance of one necessitated the scarcity of the other. A rich man, for

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example, could not be virtuous, while a poor man most likely was. The same was true when it came to causality. This cynical view of things held that a person abounding in virtue would most likely not get rich, while one lacking virtue would, because he would be unscrupulous in his pursuit of wealth. The clerical economists contested both of these points, and especially the latter. It is on this issue of the causal relationship of wealth and virtue, however, that the clerical economists reveal their fundamental inconsistencies— inconsistencies that likewise reveal how much the clerical economists occupied an antebellum world that was very much in tension and transition. To explain this better it is worth turning to some words of Reinhold Niebuhr. In The Irony of American History, in a chapter suitably entitled “Happiness, Prosperity and Virtue,” Niebuhr wrote: According to Jeffersonians, prosperity and well-being should be sought as the basis of virtue. They believed that if each citizen found contentment in a justly and richly rewarded toil he would not be disposed to take advantage of his neighbor. The Puritans regarded virtue as the basis of prosperity, rather than prosperity as the basis of virtue. But in any case the fusion of these two forces created a preoccupation with the material circumstances of life which expressed a more consistent bourgeois ethos than that of even the most advanced nations of Europe.9

In many ways the religious and intellectual conflicts over money and morality in the antebellum era can be thought of as part of the difficult transition that took place as the heirs of the Puritan tradition sought to adapt their understanding of the world to the ascendant Jeffersonian model. For their part, the clerical economists lived at the very center of this tension. As good Jeffersonian Americans, they believed that prosperity could be a basis for virtue. But as the nineteenth-century descendants of the Puritans, they also believed that prosperity could come only from virtuous behavior. And to add even more to the confusion, they were not always consistent about what they meant by “virtue.” The result of their attempted synthesis is messy, to say the least, and requires some disentangling. On some points they were perfectly clear, while on others—and especially their inconsistent definitions and uses of the term virtue—they were both confused and confusing. In the clerical economists’ optimistic, natural-theologic, and Puritan-influenced view of the world, virtuous behavior could lead only to economic success, and success could come only from virtuous behavior. Furthermore, the laws of political economy

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supposedly demanded that this be the case. As Francis Wayland put it succinctly: “Where virtue, frugality, and respect for right exist, riches will, by natural consequence, accumulate.”10 And as Alonzo Potter elaborated, Christians should perceive “the hand of God in the dispensations of nature— giving to virtue the ‘world that now is, as well as that which is to come.’”11 In other words, God rewarded virtuous actions both on earth (that is, in business) and in heaven. Such a system of rewards was the obvious, and in their words “natural,” state of affairs. The cherished principles of natural theology simply forbade any other conclusion, and the new discipline of political economy merely explained in greater detail how the specifics of these natural, just, and God-given laws worked. For the individual, virtuous behavior led to wealth. But the expanded picture, which included the entire American republic, was not so clear. Along with the Jeffersonians, the clerical economists also believed that the prospect of wealth naturally encouraged virtue in an individual. As John McVickar expressed the idea: “The honest pursuit of wealth is still the greatest safeguard of virtue.” And with the skeptic in mind he added: “Let the speculative moralist declaim against it [the pursuit of wealth] as he will, let him with Plato teach us that gold and virtue are balanced against each other in opposite scales.” Again, we see just how much the clerical economists abhorred the notion that wealth and virtue were inversely related. Instead they cared about both wealth and virtue and, as always, wanted to make the point that the two were not mutually exclusive, a charge apparently dating back to Plato. The truth of the matter, in McVickar’s opinion, was exactly the reverse. “The conclusion then to which we arrive, is this,” he wrote, “that though wealth be not virtue, neither is it virtue to despise it; that the pursuit of it is favorable to moral conduct, and in the mass of men, necessary to it.”12 This quotation, McVickar’s “conclusion” on the matter as he put it, does indeed encapsulate the clerical economists’ defense of the entrepreneurial spirit—a defense that was simultaneously Christian and utilitarian, or in Niebuhr’s terms both Puritan and Jeffersonian. This one sentence also serves as an appropriate place to examine the clerical economists’ inconsistent definitions of virtue and their confusing understanding of the relationship that was supposed to exist between virtue and the pursuit of wealth. First and foremost, as McVickar argued, wealth passed the virtue test. Wealth and its pursuit were not opposed to virtue, but were in fact “favorable to moral conduct.” The two actually went hand in hand. A critic should therefore not mistake the rejection of wealth for true virtue. As McVickar put it, “neither is it virtue to despise it [wealth].”

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Such a simplistic reaction was misguided, sanctimonious, and potentially dangerous to society. But—and this is an important distinction—even though wealth and virtue were complementary instead of contradictory, they were not one and the same. McVickar, after all, had begun his conclusion with the words “though wealth be not virtue,” indicating that the two, regardless of the closeness of the relationship, were not synonymous. McVickar also—and this is the final important point that this passage raises—cared a great deal about moral conduct “in the mass of men,” as he expressed it. He was, in other words, more interested in ethics on the large or societal scale than on the individual level. He spoke, for example, about the “public good” that a “public instruction” in political economy would effect. He also talked about how the pursuit of wealth “in a national point of view is decidedly favorable to the formation of moral character,” and about how it was “the first step in the civilization of nations.”13 In all of these statements, McVickar’s utilitarian priorities were on full display. The dilemma, as always, was that America’s peculiar republican civilization was one that depended on the virtue of individuals and not just “the mass of men.” This is where the clerical economists’ thoughts about wealth and virtue reveal their inconsistencies the most as they waffled back and forth between competing understandings of virtue and how they thought virtue was to be employed in the pursuit of wealth. On the one hand, they argued that pursuing wealth was not antithetical to virtuous behavior. In fact, quite to the contrary, an individual had to behave virtuously—with industry frugality, sobriety, and so on—to achieve wealth. It was therefore in a person’s economic self-interest to behave virtuously. The desire for wealth, one might say, provided an external motivation or material reward for virtuous actions. But on the other hand, the clerical economists recognized that the American republic also needed the kind of virtue that came from within—a kind of virtue that would provide the necessary check or limit to an individual’s pursuit of wealth. It was one thing to behave virtuously, expecting that one would be rewarded for it materially. It was another thing to behave virtuously because one felt obliged by conscience to do so. Virtuous behavior might often look the same, but it could come from very different sources: the first source was ultimately material self-interest, and the second, religious duty. The clerical economists were talking therefore about two different kinds of virtue. In their writings on political economy, however, they never made this distinction clear, an oversight and an inconsistency that makes their

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texts difficult to disentangle. Along with Adam Smith, the clerical economists believed in a two-tiered hierarchy of virtues.14 At the top were the theological virtues (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so on)—as well as sympathy, the subject of Smith’s first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Below this echelon were the more mundane virtues of industry, frugality, sobriety, and punctuality—as well as prudence or self-interest, the subject of Smith’s second book, The Wealth of Nations. These latter virtues were also the ones of “worldly asceticism” that Max Weber identified as forming the Protestant basis for a spirit of capitalism, and he was right to do so. Both systems (the religious and the economic) value and apparently reward industry, frugality, sobriety, and punctuality—all virtues that exemplify the prudential constraining of the baser human impulses for the purpose of delayed gratification, whether in this life or the next.15 This was the place where the virtue of self-discipline overlapped with the self-interested and hedonistic pursuit of wealth—a partnership that the clerical economists celebrated because they saw it as part of God’s good plan for the ordering of human society. According to John McVickar, who wrote that political economy “shews that to be their interest, which religion has shewn to be their duty,” the new science had revealed the Creator’s wise intention of making duty and self-interest reinforce one another and have the same good effects on the nation.16 Convincing their countrymen of this fortunate partnership of Christianity and political economy was the clerical economists’ chief objective. They had merely wanted to show that the pursuit of wealth could be consistent with a virtuous life, and that a nation composed of such pursuers would actually be stable and moral rather than unstable and immoral. The virtue of prudence that Adam Smith extolled in The Wealth of Nations might belong to a lower echelon of virtues, but it was a virtue nonetheless. And inasmuch as that society inspired at least these minimal virtues and produced wealth at the same time, the clerical economists would defend it against all other competing social visions. This was their utilitarian conclusion of the matter. The clerical economists left unresolved, however, the tensions that could exist between the theological virtues and the mundane virtues. They almost never mentioned how a person could simultaneously obey the Christian injunctions to faith, hope, and love while engaging in morally perilous selfinterested economic activity; and they especially agreed that political economy itself had no answers. In “the language of this science,” John McVickar wrote, subtly criticizing his own discipline, “man is but a machine for the creation of value.” Destitute “of personal virtues,” he continued, “man is a

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machine out of order.”17 At this point, McVickar must have been thinking about the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, although he did not make this distinction clear. These virtues not only transcended the more mundane ones of Weber’s worldly asceticism (industry, frugality, sobriety, punctuality) but also could be relied on to provide the necessary check to self-interested economic behavior. Whereas the mundane virtues could reinforce the individual’s pursuit of wealth, only the theological virtues could restrain that pursuit. And as these antebellum educators acknowledged, if the republic were to endure, Americans had to develop independent and robust moral characters in tune with these transcendent virtues. Even as optimistic as McVickar was about America’s future once governed by the laws of political economy, his vision, as he put it, “presupposes virtue in the people.” The new and wonderful science of political economy “enters into a harmonious alliance with religion,” he wrote, “but cannot supply its place.”18 Again, science and religion, wealth and virtue complemented rather than contradicted each other, but they were not one and the same. To understand the workings of the physical universe one needed to see through the lens of both science and religion, but religion most of all. Similarly, to understand the proper workings of the national economy one needed to see through the lens of both wealth and virtue, but virtue most of all. Weber’s mundane virtues would actually aid the working of the national economy by inspiring people to be the best producers that they could be, while the theological virtues would help restrain those same people and thus prevent that economy from spinning out of control. To the clerical economists it was a fortunate or providential coincidence that had made material self-interest and religious duty one and the same. But the pursuit of wealth could also extend beyond its God-given proper limit and become vice. People needed the virtue that came independently from Christian faith and devout obedience. This kind of virtue affected people’s consciences and inspired them to pursue wealth within the proper bounds. The personal desire for wealth, when moderate and sober, was always good for the nation, but when excessive was both morally wrong in and of itself, and dangerous to the country. The problem, as always, was that the clerical economists said almost nothing about when and how these more “personal virtues”19 were supposed to limit and restrain an individual’s pursuit of happiness. As we will see in part IV, however, this was exactly the question the pastoral moralists sought to answer. Their “adapted” response was to hold fast to the fundamental principles of liberalism, while seeking both to mold people’s economic activity to the dictates of their Christian faith

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and to mold their Christian faith to the immutable realities of a modernizing society. But before that, it is important to address a second question that the clerical economists left unresolved—the increase in poverty and inequality in a developing economy. Although they addressed this subject more frequently than the difficult questions about virtue, their treatment of it was, at the very least, na¨ıvely optimistic and shortsighted. The subject of industrial poverty will also lead directly into part III on the contrarians—those who, instead of adapting their faith to a developing market capitalist world, used their faith to combat it outright.

chapter seven

The Problem of the Poor

a n t e b e l l u m Christians had many reasons to be skeptical of the modernizing economy and the new so-called science that was meant to explain it. Some feared that political economy might have atheistic origins and that in the business world it sanctioned amoral behavior at best and immoral behavior at worst. Other critics claimed that the modernizing economy was creating more rigid social classes, and that the growing disparity in wealth injured not only the poor, but also the health of the larger society. Instead of raising all boats, market capitalism might end up lowering them all, violently. Many could agree that free trade and the division of labor had led to some good ends—greater individual and national wealth, for example— but was this good fruit only for a privileged few and perhaps even at the expense of the many? And if countless others were made more miserable as the nation developed economically, did this not pose an actual threat to the nation’s stability? Although a democracy and not a monarchy, America might unwittingly follow in the footsteps of France, whose impoverished classes had eventually toppled the government. Increased inequality, so it seemed, always led to social instability. Political economists in Great Britain—even more terrified by the prospect of revolution than any American—had been writing about these class concerns for decades, but unfortunately ideas such as David Ricardo’s iron law of wages and Thomas Malthus’s prediction of working-class starvation were never endearing. The Americans who wanted to import political economy into their own country therefore had to distance themselves from those bleak theories. Not only might political economy be atheistic and corrupting, but 97

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it also might prescribe miserable living and working conditions for a large majority of the country’s population—an outcome that was morally problematic and fundamentally at odds with American ideals. All things considered, however, the American clerical economists argued that they had more reason to be optimistic about the condition of the poor, largely because of the country’s peculiar national circumstances. For example, they generally accepted the principles of Ricardo and Malthus as true, but went on to argue that those principles only bore their bitter fruit in conditions that existed in Britain and perhaps other European nations, and happily did not pertain in the United States. They therefore felt that they had the luxury of picking and choosing what they thought to be good and true in their British precursors’ work, while eschewing the more offensive doctrines. In the end, they concluded, perhaps naively, that none of the factors that made Britain’s “dismal science” so dismal applied to their young and expansive republic. The American clerical economists thought of Ricardo and Malthus as their discipline’s most important recent theorists. John McVickar, for example, called Ricardo’s theory of rent “unquestionably the greatest advance which has been made in Political Economy since the time of Adam Smith” and “a fundamental principle of society.” He likewise referred to Malthus’s population principle as one “with which every student of Political Economy should be familiar.”1 Henry Vethake similarly adopted Ricardo’s formula for the iron law of wages. The “rate of wages,” he wrote, as if quoting Ricardo directly, “is dependent on the relation which the capital of a country bears to the numbers of the people.” To put this in Ricardian terms, wages were determined by dividing the wages fund (Vethake’s “capital of a country”) by the population of the labor force (his “numbers of the people”).2 But even though both Vethake and McVickar believed in these dismal theories, they did not think that they fully applied to their own national situation. In their opinion, America’s exceptional circumstances rescued the republic from political economy’s darker conclusions, and by extension rescued the American discipline of political economy from some of its sharpest critics. In a note tellingly entitled “Ricardo’s principle limited,” for instance, McVickar argued that the iron law of wages did not bear on the American context. Ricardo’s “law,” again, was that profits and wages relate inversely. When wages have to be high, because of high grain prices for instance, profits will be low. Conversely, when the market will bear low wages (or when an employer can get away with paying low wages), profits will be high. In America, however, this was not the case. As McVickar sought to make clear:

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“Both wages and profits may be high at the same time and in the same business, as is exemplified in the United States, where the capitalist soon grows wealthy, and the labourer whom he employs soon grows independent.” To McVickar, America represented the best-case scenario: a country in which capital and labor were not arrayed against each other, competing for the same pile of money, but actually got rich together, the laborer eventually enjoying independence as well. McVickar never explained why this situation existed in America, just that it did, and that for whatever reason, it constituted a noteworthy limitation of Ricardo’s general principle.3 McVickar had similar thoughts about Ricardo’s theory of rent. He believed strongly in the theory, calling it “one of the main pillars upon which the science [of political economy] now rests.” But as McVickar wanted to make clear, Ricardo did not intend for his theory of rent to be universally applied. In fact, McVickar argued that Ricardo, in all his genius, had provided for certain exceptions, and that the whole of America just happened to fit one of those exceptions. As John R. McCulloch—Ricardo’s popularizer and the author of the text that McVickar reprinted in America—expressed the idea: “On the first settling of any country abounding in large tracts of unappropriated land, no rent is ever paid; and for this plain and obvious reason, that no person will pay a rent for what may be procured in unlimited quantities for nothing!” McVickar himself then commented in a note: “Of the truth of this position the interior of our country affords abundant illustration.” Thus McVickar thought that the principle of rent, the most important axiom of Ricardo’s whole economic system, did not apply to America and would not apply for as long as there remained a frontier—for as long as America was a “country abounding in large tracts of unappropriated land.”4 All of the clerical economists recognized the importance of the frontier to America’s prosperity and to its exceptional status among the nations of the world. “Centuries may pass over us,” McVickar wrote, “before scantiness of food shall be the provocation to rapine.” In other words, he predicted that Americans for generations to come had no reason to fear the grim predictions of Malthus’s population theory. Francis Lieber similarly wrote of the “many natural advantages of the United States; the abundance of fertile land, with a thin population, unexposed to the evils and dangers with which crowded countries are rife.” And Francis Wayland, as usual, spoke glowingly about the American “land, rich and inexhausted, adapted to the production of every article of convenience and luxury.” According to these clerical economists, for as long as it lasted, abundant land and the relative shortage of labor would insulate Americans from the many problems of Europe.5

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Henry Vethake also used America as an exception to prove one of the rules of British political economy, in this case Ricardo’s iron law of wages and its connection with population. Vethake agreed with Ricardo that a nation’s population was held in check by external economic forces such as the price of grain. Because Ricardo believed that wages remained just above subsistence level, he therefore assumed that whenever wages actually declined, working-class families would have to respond by having fewer children. Ricardo then extrapolated that these economic forces, when felt across the nation, would eventually reduce the laboring population. America, however, proved to be an anomaly. Most laborers, Vethake wrote, were “not in this predicament in the United States, where the numbers of the people can be shewn . . . to have doubled themselves in a period so short as twenty-five years.” Americans, in other words, had the best of both worlds. They were breeding to their hearts’ content but still receiving wages that allowed them to live in material comfort. To Vethake, again, this American situation was the exception that proved the rule. On the expansive American continent, where the “population is doing much more than sustain itself,” he wrote, “we see how actively the principle of population would exert itself, if the checks to its exertion were to be suddenly removed.”6 In crowded Europe, by contrast, there were more external economic checks to the population, and Ricardo’s law was a reality and not a mere theory. Thus in the opinions of these clerical economists, it was not that Ricardo’s and Malthus’s ideas did not hold true in general, it was just that they did not hold true given America’s particular circumstances. Just as the principles of population and rent had a proviso for a country with a super-abundance of uncultivated arable land, for instance, so did the iron law of wages have a proviso for a country with a super-scarcity of laborers. Should all the nation’s arable land be cultivated, or should there one day be a glut of laborers instead of a shortage—should the conditions in America, in other words, one day approximate those of Great Britain—then the more dismal laws would go into effect. The clerical economists therefore believed that Ricardo’s and Malthus’s laws were more limited than originally thought, but that their general recommendations of free trade and the division of labor were still worthy of being followed.7 Antebellum protectionists like Calvin Colton, however, had a different opinion. As one historian describes him, Colton “attempted nothing less than a complete refutation of the free-trade position and of the vast structure of economic theory undergirding it.”8 Despising the free-trade economists’ arrogant claim to have discovered universal truths, Colton argued that the

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inapplicability in America of the so-called laws of British political economy— which were almost exclusively pro–free trade—was enough to demonstrate their falsehood. The young discipline of political economy, Colton argued, “is a science composed of contingent propositions—contingent on the peculiar position, the peculiar interests, and the peculiar institutions of the country to which its rules are applied.”9 It was therefore a mistake to adopt these earlier economic theories that were based on very different social circumstances. Colton’s main objective was to articulate a thoroughly American political economy. He did not oppose the idea of political economy itself—he wrote a five hundred–page treatise on the subject in 1848—but he did hate the notion of these British theorists that free trade was the universal and scientific conclusion to which all political economists must conform. “The doctrine of free trade,” he wrote, not mincing any words, “is a fraud, imposed upon the world by pensioned writers, for the benefit of Great Britain,” a “great conspiracy against mankind, from Adam Smith down to M’Culloch.”10 Political economy, he admitted, might actually be a science, but free trade’s “claim to be ranked among the sciences,” Colton charged on the very first page of his Public Economy, “was a stolen shield.” The doctrine was nothing more than hypothesis and so “to call it science, as the Free-Trade economists do, is precisely the same as to claim our belief, that the earth rests on the back of an elephant. . . . It stands alone, unsupported.” Similarly Colton did not disdain all political economists, just the “Free-Trade economists,” both American and British. According to him, they were the ones who thought that “the masses of mankind are to be regarded as mere working machines for the benefit of the few,” and whose system, if implemented in full, would be “most costly to the people of the United States.” Instead of being different and exceptional, America, if it continued to emulate Britain’s policy of free trade, would one day suffer all of the same ills that Britain suffered—chief among them a miserable and fixed working class. The only way to prevent such a fate, Colton concluded with some ironic reasoning, was to eschew the doctrine of free trade and defend America’s peculiar classless society and personal freedoms with a protective tariff.11 For all of their wrangling about free trade versus protectionism, however, the two sides in this debate never questioned the division of labor, political economy’s other fundamental axiom. The free-trade clerical economists constantly glorified the civilization that would accompany an increased division of labor, while the main thing that protectionists wanted to protect was the young American manufacturing interests. Historian Paul Conkin,

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for example, writes that Calvin Colton “celebrated new and ever larger factories.”12 Both sides, in other words, were pro-manufacturing and thus necessarily pro–division of labor. Both sides also recognized that the division of labor always brought along with it an increased inequality between rich and poor that had proven problematic for industrializing nations such as Great Britain. Interestingly though, both the American free traders and the protectionists responded to the problem of inequality with essentially the same set of answers—a similarity that illustrates the actual closeness of their beliefs. For example, everyone believed that inequality existed both in nature and civilization and that it created problems for the body politic. No one, in other words, was na¨ıve enough to believe or bold enough to deny that civilized society existed without its various ranks and prejudices. Civilization, after all, was based on the division of labor, and the division of labor meant inequality in work. But as both the protectionists and the free traders pointed out—and herein lay an important distinction—the existence of vocational inequality that came from the division of labor did not necessitate the creation of rigid social classes, at least not in America. Both sides believed that America gave to even the lowest-born free man the opportunity to act on his natural (as described by Adam Smith) desire to better his condition. For the sake of civilization and greater economic productivity, for example, some people simply had to work in Adam Smith’s pin factory, consigning themselves to a single monotonous task. But such a worker was not stuck there indefinitely. Because of the higher wages that American laborers received, a man could work for a time in these less-than-ideal conditions; save some money if he was industrious, frugal, and temperate enough (and, thinking of Malthus, if he did not have too large of a family to support); and then move on to true independence, possibly on the frontier or by running his own small business. This, anyway, was the American ideal that many at the time championed. It is difficult to tell whether these economic thinkers merely used the idea of the American self-made man to make an increased division of labor in America more bearable or whether they genuinely believed in it. But all of them expressed faith that the freedom and classlessness of American society would keep the country from repeating the mistakes of modernizing European nations. As Alonzo Potter, the avowed enemy of working-class radicalism, argued: “The condition of American workmen is such as to render them the envy and admiration of their brethren in every other land. . . . How easily do they procure the shelter of a comfortable roof, and an abundant supply of wholesome food and raiment?”13 The division of labor, he admitted,

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had produced some ill effects, but “the balance is still . . . greatly in favor of the modern working class.” Thanks especially to the recent developments in “manufacturing and commercial labor,” he argued, “the bare-footed and ill-lodged . . . wears, now, shoes and stockings on his feet, and has glass in his windows, and tea and sugar on his table, which his predecessor had not.”14 The relatively limited problems of industrial production, in other words, were more than compensated for by the expanded opportunities in common-man consumption. And so we return, once again, to the clerical economists’ hidden utilitarianism. To them, economic modernization was worth it because it made the large majority of people, including workingclass people, happier through increased possessions. But Potter and other clerical economists wanted to take their defense of the American working man one step further and actually deny the existence of a “working class” in the first place. “All men here are of the same class,” Francis Wayland wrote, “for all have the same interests; and hence a war of classes is impossible.”15 And as he similarly added in another address: “With us, there is but one class, the people.”16 This last quotation was obviously meant to be a rhetorical flourish, but other clerical economists were more specific, especially about the importance of proper nomenclature. “The term Working Class has been most arbitrarily used,”17 Francis Lieber argued; and Alonzo Potter similarly wrote: “The condition of those classes of society, usually, but in this country very inaptly denominated the Working classes, presents a subject for profound and anxious consideration.” As Potter went on to argue: “There is here no class of rich or poor.” Potter’s point, like Wayland’s but more straightforward, was that although inequality existed and would always exist in a civilized society, Americans, unlike Europeans, were not assigned a lifelong rank at their birth and because of their birth. “In our own country,” Potter wrote, “everything like hereditary distinction or privilege has been abolished.”18 In this country, Potter warned, the rich can easily lose their fortunes through indolence and vice while, conversely, the low-born can amass a fortune through their personal industry, insight, and frugality. This, in other words, was meritocracy, plain and simple. Regarding the working class, the clerical economists’ conclusions made it impossible to argue that the status of the poor was anything but temporary or a result of their own personal moral failures and lack of discipline. From their perspective, the general categories of rich and poor would always exist. But in the new American republic they were neither static nor predetermined. There might be class stratification, but it was not an inescapable caste system as in India, or even

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a rigid social hierarchy as in England. “What a contrast to this state of things is afforded by the aspect of society here in America!” Francis Bowen exulted. In this country, whole fortunes could be made and lost within a single generation. “Wealth here circulates as rapidly as the money which is its representative.” Bowen added: “A great fortune springs up, like the prophet’s gourd, in a night, and is dissipated by some unforeseen accident on the morrow.” Consequently, “how is it possible,” he asked, “that the poor should be arrayed in hostility against the rich, when the son of an Irish coachman . . . becomes the governor of a State, and the grandson of a millionaire dies a pauper?”19 Again, it was the ideal of the American selfmade man, and his counterpart the self-destroyed man, that differentiated the young republic from the societies and economies of the Old World. “In Europe,” as Calvin Colton explained, “a man is born to his condition, high, middle, or low. In the United States a man makes his condition, and there is no obstacle, but his own lack of will and enterprise, or defect of natural endowments, in the way of his acquiring wealth, and gaining the highest consideration in the community.”20 In the opinion of Colton and Bowen—an opinion they obviously shared with the free traders—even though inequality existed and would continue to exist in the American civilized society, where an individual ended up on the social and economic spectrum was largely a matter of his own choice and innate abilities. As most economic observers saw it, this was the genius of American society. “Never before has a country existed,” wrote Francis Lieber, “in which industry, honesty, and frugality were so sure of success in acquiring a fair livelihood and an honourable standing in the community as in our own.”21 The principal oversight in this plan, however was that whether rhetorical or real, the American self-made man depended on a set of conditions that were exceptional but not, perhaps, permanent. To a great extent these social observers put all of their eggs in this one basket of American exceptionalism. The economic ills of Europe—potential starvation, dehumanizing work, and gross inequality—they predicted, would not be re-created in America because of the abundance of land that existed on the American continent and the freedom of mobility that existed in American society. But what if these exceptional aspects of American life were not as enduring as they had hoped? In other words, what if America started to look more and more like European nations? What if access to the frontier was more difficult than thought? What if success in business was difficult as well, even when an individual possessed all of the requisite industry, frugality, and virtue? And what if classes did begin to form in America and people had a difficult

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time climbing their way out of working-class jobs? Finally—and here we undermine one of the clerical economists’ most important assumptions— what if the population of certain areas, cities most likely, began to swell from natural growth and immigration and there was an abundance of labor instead of a shortage? Would wages remain high and would the capitalist and the laborer still be partners rather than antagonists? What would happen, in other words, if America was not so exceptional anymore? Would the future be so bright, or would the dismal laws of Ricardo and Malthus take effect? These clerical economists—both protectionists and free traders—did not indulge such questions, but there were some Christian economic thinkers who did, and who were not very optimistic.

part iii “Opposed”—The Contrarians

p a r t i investigates the clerical economists’ self-assured answers to the religious problems of political economy. In particular it details their explicit faith in that Christianized discipline as well as their implicit adherence to the principles of utilitarianism. This part, by contrast, focuses on two individuals, Stephen Colwell and Orestes Brownson, who abhorred both the conclusions of the clerical economists as well as the underlying principles and processes by which they reached them. Both of these men were what could be called self-conscious or intentional “contrarians.” If popular opinion dictated one thing, they usually argued for the opposite. They enjoyed the “character” of the gadfly, the self-proclaimed voice crying in the wilderness, and often published their provocative opinions at exactly and purposefully the wrong time. This is also why they must be treated individually instead of as a part of any larger movement or cause. They did not join forces with any group, much less with each other. This is especially true for Brownson, the ultimate antebellum contrarian. He flirted with almost every spiritual community possible in his day before finally converting to Catholicism. But if Brownson was the outsider’s outsider, Stephen Colwell was the insider’s outsider. In fact, it might seem odd to think of him as a radical at all.

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Stephen Colwell

s t e p h e n c o l w e l l (1800–1871) lived most of his life among the Philadelphia elite, enjoying a long and distinguished career as an industrialist and philanthropist. After the death of his first wife, Colwell remarried Sarah Bell Richards, a member of a wealthy Pennsylvania iron manufacturing family, and in 1836 was placed in charge of one of his father-in-law’s iron manufactories, first in Weymouth, New Jersey, and then in the Philadelphia suburb of Conshohocken. Colwell was a member of the American Iron and Steel Association, as well as the director of three railroad lines: the Camden and Atlantic, the Reading, and the Pennsylvania Central. Before the Civil War he was an active member of the African Colonization Society and the Philadelphia House of Refuge. During the war he helped found the Union League and gave generously to the Sanitary Commission and the Christian Commission, while after the war he helped support the Freedman’s Aid Society. Colwell also became a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton Theological Seminary, where he founded a chair of Christian social ethics. Religiously speaking, Colwell was an Old School Presbyterian, and served on both the General Assembly and the church’s Board of Education.1 Colwell also had considerable abilities as an economic thinker. Although never a professor of political economy, Colwell followed these issues with great interest and contributed to them himself as an avowed protectionist. He was a close friend of Henry C. Carey, one of the most influential American political economists in the nineteenth century, and he participated regularly in the “Carey Vespers,” in which prominent Philadelphia leaders and 1 09

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intellectuals gathered to discuss business, politics, and the arts. In the 1850s Colwell authored numerous books and articles on topics ranging from the state of manufacturing in Pennsylvania, to the national credit system, to the economic strength of the slave South,2 and in 1856 wrote the “Preliminary Essay” and “Notes” to Frederick List’s tome, the National System of Political Economy. In 1867 he published his last book, Financial Suggestions and Remarks, and when he died in 1871 he bequeathed to the University of Pennsylvania his personal library of nearly six thousand books and pamphlets on political economy. But why should Colwell be considered an economic radical? Given his pedigree, he should not qualify as a radical at all. He was a part of the industrial elite, obviously cared about maintaining the social and economic status quo, and was an active member of a religious denomination (Old School Presbyterian) that hardly had a reputation for fostering subversive behavior. Nevertheless, Colwell was known to entertain socialistic ideas and to occasionally espouse his particular form of Christian socialism in some of the leading periodicals of the day and in other book-length polemics. It was also in these pieces that Colwell articulated his biting Christian critique of free-trade political economy and industrial development. It is difficult to say exactly why Colwell was so receptive to socialism in the first place—what it was in his personality or background that might have predisposed him to it—but the turning point seemed to have come on a trip he took to Europe sometime early in his second marriage. Ironically, this trip was intended to prepare Colwell for his career in the family iron manufacturing business. Colwell’s father-in-law had sent him across the Atlantic to observe state-of-the-art industrialism in all its glory, but instead of being impressed by European productive capacities, Colwell returned from his travels appalled by the misery he had witnessed among the European working class.3 In the early 1840s he published his budding radical opinions in a set of four articles for the Presbyterian journal, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review.4 These articles were all ostensibly reviews of recent British publications in political economy, but Colwell used them more as opportunities to lambaste free trade and industrialism for their pernicious effects on the poor. Colwell’s main point in these reviews was simple: working-class people in Europe live wretched lives, even more wretched in fact than American slaves. “The American slave,” Colwell argued straightforwardly, “is better fed, better clothed, better lodged, and withal far more contented” than “the present labouring poor population of Great Britain and Ireland.” The British

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wage slave, by contrast, “has no master. No one is bound to provide him food nor clothing, or to take care of him when sick.”5 Colwell played up this comparison of wretched wage labor with American slavery for a couple of reasons. For one, he believed that slavery was a profitable and efficient form of labor organization that enriched not only the Southern states but Northern cities as well. Although a staunch unionist and supporter of the Northern war effort when the conflict came, ideologically Colwell was pro-slavery and remained pro-slavery until emancipation. In fact, as sectional tensions heated up in the 1850s, Colwell wrote a number of pamphlets warning his fellow Northerners about the financial price they would have to pay for either disunion or emancipation. The titles of the pamphlets alone reveal his anxiety about this issue: The South: A Letter from a Friend in the North with Special Reference to the Effects of Disunion upon Slavery (1856); The Five Cotton States and New York, or Remarks upon the Social and Economic Aspects of the Southern Political Crisis (1861); and most succinctly and straightforwardly, Southern Wealth and Northern Profits (1861). Colwell also favorably viewed slavery from a humanitarian perspective, buying into the Southern paternalistic defense of “the peculiar institution.” Perhaps he only believed this set of arguments so he could justify this profitable but problematic labor system; but a more realistic scenario is that he honestly shared the Southern planters’ view of things. Although he was a Northern industrialist who employed wage labor and had to keep his eye on the bottom line, he was also a paternalist who cared about the way working people were treated, and he intensely disliked his fellow industrialists who abused and exploited their employees. He therefore agreed with and promoted the agrarian/paternalist defense of slavery and its critique of wage slavery. “Personal bondage,” he wrote: is not the only evil, nor is personal freedom the only blessing in the world. . . . Slavery would be a relief to millions who are suffering the pangs of famine and destitution. . . . These [Southern] states know that the poor of many countries are in a far worse situation than their slaves. They know that the feudal slaves set free in England, when the masters had no longer any interest in retaining them, have been vagrants and paupers to the present time.

Thus Colwell concluded: “English [wage] slaves are harnessed beasts, ill fed, ill clothed, ill housed, and variously ill treated. American slaves live longer than their masters, while English slaves die prematurely, of hunger, wet, cold, and sorrow.”6

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In contrast to the paternalist, the capitalist had no economic incentive to watch after his workers, and most likely therefore had no such emotional bond with them. In fact, one of Colwell’s central criticisms of industrialism was that it did not foster paternalistic relationships. Wage earners could be merely used up for their labor and then discarded like broken pieces of machinery. Unlike his Southern contemporary George Fitzhugh, however, Colwell never adopted the absurd proposal of replacing industrial wage laborers with slaves. Instead he merely wanted to draw attention to workingclass misery and compare it with something that would make sympathetic Americans think more critically about the wisdom and goodness of their own nascent industrialism. As he put it: “This comparison is not made to justify slavery; far from it; it is made to show there is a condition worse than that of African bondage.” Colwell, in fact, was not happy about the presence of slavery in America. He called it “an existing evil,” and a sinful institution that took root in America for “God knows” what reason. But in typical paternalist fashion, Colwell also thought that slavery should be reformed rather than abolished, and the slaves themselves looked after with even greater care than before, rather than set free. He therefore detested the abolitionists whom he described as “fanatics”; and their rhetoric, which he similarly called “virulent,” “rancorous,” and generally irresponsible.7 Colwell attacked British abolitionists as well but more for their hypocrisy than for their fanaticism. He was not displeased that the abolitionist cause in Britain had met with success, but he thought it odd, self-righteous, and a bit self-deceptive of them to have claimed that the most egregious moral wrongs of the British Empire had been righted. For example, Colwell quoted one sympathetic British observer who feared “‘that the fashion of our philanthropy is to exercise its energies rather abroad than at home.’” “‘It is difficult,’” this writer continued, “‘to say that people are sincere who look across the globe for objects of compassion to succor and relieve, and are blind and deaf to sights and sounds of human misery grovelling at their feet.’” Colwell thought that there were important lessons to be learned from this British example, and cautioned enthusiastic American abolitionists to make sure that they did not unwittingly forge industrial “fetters far more irksome, complicated, and difficult to rend than those of slavery” in the faraway South.8 In general, although an industrialist himself, Colwell feared for America’s industrial future. He did not like what he had seen in Europe, and he knew that Americans would suffer the same ills if they made the same decisions. “As a nation we have already entered upon the mercantile and industrial

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system,” he lamented, and there was no reason to think that America would be immune to the problems of that system. We “can by no means flatter ourselves,” he wrote, “that we are not destined to tread hard upon the footsteps of our brethren in Great Britain, and that we shall not, in less than a quarter of a century from this time, exhibit some of the dreadful scenes which now sicken us when we look abroad.” Colwell did not intend to criticize Great Britain or other European nations as such, but he did want to attack the economic system that they had adopted in the past halfcentury. Quoting the French intellectual and Catholic socialist Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont, Colwell bluntly warned that “‘wherever the theories of civilization and political economy which have prevailed in England shall have been longer established and more extensively applied,’” there will also be found “‘a proportionate increase of the poor.’”9 In stating this, Colwell mounted nothing less than a total assault on the very values, assumptions, and defenses of the clerical economists. For starters Colwell called into question the esteemed goal of establishing a modern commercial civilization. Francis Wayland and his colleagues, on the other hand, regarded commercial civilization as the indisputable and inviolable good end—Adam Smith’s last stage of human progress. In their opinion, things were demonstrably better than they had been in the past, and they would be even better in the future. Human beings had harnessed the power of nature as never before and were reaping much greater returns for their labor, producing more finished goods, and thus providing themselves and others “with the comforts and conveniences and luxuries of life, in the greatest abundance, and at the least possible cost.”10 Colwell, on the other hand, who actually was an economic producer, feared what he saw brewing in the developing “civilized” economy. In his opinion, industrial civilization had brought about more harm than good: greater inequality and more urban squalor than ever before. Just look at Great Britain, he urged. Some people’s lives might be better, but even more people’s were worse. He therefore argued that Christians should not be praising “civilization” as if it were synonymous with Christianity. “When the men of the heathen world look upon the Christian world,” he asked, “what do they behold? Christianity?—No! [but rather] Civilization. . . . They behold the evidences of science on every side; but illustrations of the pure teachings of Christ they find nowhere.”11 In stark contrast to the clerical economists, Colwell did not think that the principles of civilization and the principles of Christianity were the same, and he challenged his readers “to find warrant in the scriptures for some of the great features of civilized

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society.” In his humble opinion, those supposedly “great features” were, in truth, “glaringly in contrast with the inappreciable blessings conferred by the Christian religion.”12 But in addition to objecting to the clerical economists’ good end of civilization, Colwell also disagreed with the means to reach that end: free trade, the division of labor, and the development of industrial technologies. The clerical economists had claimed that a society will progress inasmuch as it conforms to the scientific laws of political economy, and especially the law of free trade. Colwell argued exactly the opposite. “It may be worth inquiring,” he proposed, “whether the principles upon which free trade is urged will not go far in their ultimate conclusions to dissolve the whole fabric of human society.” For Colwell, free trade actually destroyed civilization rather than build it up, and it especially destroyed the possibility of a Christian civilization. Christians, in other words, had nothing to gain from the presumed insights of Adam Smith.13 Although he never mentioned the man, Colwell obviously stood against Smith, from his foundational principles to his policy recommendations. Occasionally even showing his Christian socialist stripes, Colwell argued that the entire system of free-trade political economy and the “civilization” that it supposedly fostered were fundamentally flawed because they were based “‘upon insatiable selfishness, and upon a profound contempt of human nature.’”14 Colwell firmly believed that free trade depended on the principle of selfishness (Smith’s “self-love”15 ), and that selfishness, once unleashed, would wreak havoc both in the hearts of individuals and throughout the nation. “If all the regulations of trade, and all special protection of industry could be suddenly cast aside,” he warned, “what a struggle would ensue!” “If the trade of the world were left in the free, that is lawless, state,” he wrote—again equating free trade with lawlessness rather than lawfulness— “its mischiefs [sic] would be soon returned with interest.” In other words, Colwell feared what would happen if Smith had his way and the paternalistic restraints of national laws were rescinded. In complete disagreement with the natural-theologic worldview of the clerical economists, who always spoke of the natural goodness of people’s drive to improve themselves, Colwell saw people’s “impulses” or “passions” as sinful and, when exercised freely, almost always harmful either to their neighbors or to themselves.16 Thus Colwell concluded about the supposedly Christian science: Moral philosophy and Political Economy, which refer to the largest divisions of this subject [social ethics], have, even in the hands of Christians, failed to draw

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their principles from the Law of Christ, even where these explicitly cover the very ground of discussion. The men of the world have decided that neither of the above named sciences has any connection with Christianity, and Christian authors have virtually admitted this position by treating these subjects, without invoking the authority or the principles of Divine Truth.17

In stating this, Colwell directly refuted one of the clerical economists’ key defenses of their science: its emergence out of the trusted and Christianized discipline of Scottish common sense moral philosophy. For his part, as we will see, Colwell went a step further than other critics and impugned the Christian credentials of both sciences, not only the younger and more dubious political economy, but also moral philosophy, that time-honored and natural-theology saturated mainstay of antebellum academia. Also, as this quotation indicates, Colwell appealed to the higher authority of the Bible—an authority that the clerical economists almost never referenced. But Colwell saved his most provocative indictments of market capitalism and its Christian supporters for a book-length polemic later in his writing career. In 1851 he anonymously published his New Themes for the Protestant Clergy: Creeds without Charity, Theology without Humanity, and Protestantism without Christianity, a work that incited a three-year-long war of words among some of Philadelphia’s most prominent Protestant ministers. As the book’s title suggests, Colwell aimed his criticisms first and foremost at churches and their leaders, and only secondarily at the developing industrial economy. As a result, local clergymen and lay religious leaders took these attacks personally, as Colwell had intended them, and they responded in kind. None of the respondents, however, addressed Colwell’s arguments themselves but rather attacked Colwell personally and his so-called religious heterodoxy in particular. They claimed that Colwell enjoyed the company of “free-thinkers and socialists,” and likened New Themes to Thomas Paine’s atheistic treatise, Age of Reason. In general, they wanted to make Colwell’s criticism of worldly clergymen look like a criticism of Christianity itself. That way they could cast themselves as the defenders of orthodoxy. Those who defended Colwell, on the other hand, cast him as a reformer and perhaps even a martyr, one of the passionate “truth-finders and truth tellers” of church history who so often threaten the corrupt ecclesiastical order of the day but who “after ages enshrine in the Temples of Love, Fame, and Gratitude.”18 In reality, it is not an exaggeration to call Colwell a reformer. His general purpose was to criticize American Christendom in the name of, as he saw it,

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authentic New Testament Christianity. In a way Colwell played the role of the prophet with New Themes as his book of Jeremiah. He stood very much inside the religious tradition he was criticizing—the charge that he was an atheist was inane—and denounced his fellow believers for having lost their way and forgotten God’s command to love one another. Colwell charged that the clergy of the day had descended into squabbling over “creeds, confessions, catechisms,” and institutions, and that they generally looked on their fellow men “as so much material for conversion, or to be moulded and worked up into congregations.”19 This is why Colwell gave to New Themes the subtitle that he did: Creeds without Charity, Theology without Humanity, and Protestantism without Christianity. To him, modern American Christendom had all of the right forms—sophisticated doctrines, strong institutions, and continual revivals—but it lacked what he thought was the real heart of the Christian message: charity. And it lacked this charity precisely because the Protestant clergy had uncritically accepted and even championed the spirit, methods, and objectives of the modernizing American economy. Colwell’s logic in New Themes was actually quite simple. His inviolable assumption—an assumption that permeated all of his writings—was that “Christianity is by its very constitution the appointed protector of humanity.” “The cords which bind his [Christ’s] disciples together,” therefore, “should not be composed of opinions, nor doctrines, nor creeds,” but love— “love to God and love to man.” Here Colwell expressed as straightforwardly as anywhere his purpose of reminding Christians to love all of their neighbors—that is, all of humanity—as themselves.20 To support his point, and appeal as much as he could to his readers’ Christian sensibilities, Colwell saturated almost twenty of the first sixty pages of New Themes with passages from the Bible. It was his opinion “that Christ himself should have the chief voice in defining Christianity,” and he therefore quoted Jesus’ words copiously, especially the passage: “‘A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.’” Colwell then followed this central text with dozens of examples “of what Christ taught in his own ministry,”21 and what the apostles recorded in the Epistles: love your neighbor; blessed are the poor; forgive debts; do not worry; do not store up treasures on earth; give to the needy; love your enemies; prepare feasts for the poor; wash one another’s feet; prefer others to yourself; be united; be charitable; do not defraud your laborers; God is love; love one another.22 Colwell quoted so much scripture because he wanted to remind his readers that the New Testament’s central and radical theme was love for one’s neighbor. And starting with this as a foundation, he then sought to

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illustrate just how far the modernizing economy and its science were from Jesus’ golden rule. Colwell agreed entirely with the critique of political economy as “a science of wealth, . . . explicitly excluding all moral considerations.”23 He even argued that political economy and the free-trade system it advocated were positively anti-Christian because they encouraged people to dehumanize their neighbors instead of love them. This “position of trade,” Colwell complained, “which makes it not only the interest, but the natural course, of every one to prey upon his fellow-men to the full extent of his power and cunning, is well fitted to carry selfishness to its highest limits, and to extinguish every spark of mutual kindness.”24 Colwell obviously cared about what unregulated trade did to the virtue of the traders, and how it seemed to exercise, develop, and reward the more selfish and sinful aspects of human nature. But Colwell cared much more about what political economy and freetrade industrialism did to individual laborers. “This idea of considering men as mere machines for the purpose of creating and distributing wealth,” he wrote sarcastically and beautifully, “may do very well to round off the periods, the syllogisms, and statements of political economists; but the whole notion is totally and irreconcilably at variance with Christianity, which teaches that all the world is of less value than one soul.”25 Colwell simply hated the way political economists claimed to consider the good of the masses but forgot about individuals. To him this was the science’s fundamental flaw and its greatest hypocrisy. “The whole subject [of political economy] is man,” he contended, “and yet humanity, in its full meaning, is excluded from consideration.” Instead of caring about their fellow human beings, he added, political economists cared only about laws: “the law of increase; the laws of limitation; the supply of food; economy of feeding; restraints of marriage,” and so on.26 Thus Colwell challenged yet another one of the clerical economists’ fundamental principles: their natural-theologic love affair with science and the supposedly scientific laws of the grand economic mechanism. In Colwell’s assessment, Christians should never substitute the big economic picture for the welfare of individuals. “Whatever the importance of commerce and commercial freedom,” he argued, “the lot of the hosts who toil for their daily bread is immeasurably a more important consideration.” Still keeping the big picture in mind but turning political economy’s conventional wisdom on its head, Colwell wanted to start with people and then work his way up to international trade. “No system of human welfare,” he

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wrote, emphasizing the Christian humanitarian values that he thought were most important, can, indeed, be logically or actually developed from trade. We must go back from trade to the commodity, and from the commodity to the producer; and we must not regard him as a mere machine. . . . The order of development to be observed in constructing, or in considering, social institutions must be Human well-being, Labor, Internal Trade, Free Trade with the world.27

But according to Colwell, political economists had reversed this order. They began by theorizing and speculating about global free trade and then worked their way down to “Labor,” but never seemed to make it all the way to “Human well-being.” In fact, Colwell charged that it was last on their list of priorities, whereas for the Christian economist it should be the first. Colwell believed that political economists, including the despised Thomas Malthus, could have been religious and moral people personally, but their science, because it did not factor “Human well-being” into any of its equations and theories, was both un-Christian and fundamentally flawed. “‘It must be known soon,’” one of Colwell’s sources quipped, “‘that any system of social economy which leaves out of view both divinity and humanity must at first encounter resistance and reproach, and at last utter failure.’”28 For Colwell the fundamental difference between Christianity and political economy was that the former viewed human beings as the end, while the latter saw them as merely a means to an end. Real Christians, Colwell believed, should be more concerned with how “the progress of social economy” was going to serve human beings, while all political economists seemed to care about was how human beings could be made to serve “the progress of social economy.” As Colwell liked to put it, political economy thought of “men as mere machines for the purpose of creating and distributing wealth,” a point of view fundamentally at odds with the humanitarian values of his Christian faith.29 And to Colwell, it was not just the esoteric theorists of political economy who “failed to draw their principles from the Law of Christ,”30 but the practitioners as well—merchants and businessmen, and their allies among the clergy. “Almost all the maxims and requirements of business,” he wrote, are opposed in spirit and results to these [Christian humanitarian] precepts. That stern punctuality which is the essence of business morality . . . may be indispensable to the progress of commerce, but is irreconcilable with those precepts which enjoin upon us to love our neighbor as ourselves.31

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Again Colwell disdained those who sacrifice the small (“our neighbor”) ostensibly for the sake of the big (“the progress of commerce”). He did not think, however, that the rise of modern business was itself inherently evil. If this were the case he could not have continued to help run the family iron business. In his opinion, business actually “borrowed some of its maxims from Christianity,” and it encouraged good behavior like “an adherence to contracts, an honesty in the execution of trusts, a faithfulness to promises— far exceeding what the world had ever known.” It was just that in more recent times a mean spirit of business had come to dominate, one that “lets every man take care of himself, and ruin seize the hindmost; it . . . stimulates all to run, but permits the heat of competition to rise so high that none can stoop to pick up the multitudes who fall exhausted by the way.” And it was exactly these “multitudes,” Colwell believed, that Christians were supposed to be helping, not hurting.32 Another more serious problem was that these wealthy businessmen had become “large contributors to the maintenance of ministers,” and thus “exercise no small control in all their concerns.” And not only had these influential men come into the churches, but they had brought with them their whole system of values and their way of doing things. As Colwell put it: “The spirit of business, which rules in the affairs of the world, has largely invaded the churches.” And while the churches might have prospered as a result, real Christianity and the people it was meant to serve had suffered. Then Colwell indicted the Protestant clergy directly. “It is plain that the institutions of this world,” he wrote, “partake little of the spirit of Christ; and yet his ministers and disciples are its most noted and uncompromising defenders.”33 Sounding very much like his European contemporary Søren Kierkegaard, Colwell claimed that authentic New Testament Christianity, the Christianity of Christ and his apostles, was almost dead, nearly suffocated by the rise of an American Christendom. The modern clergy, he charged, were institution builders and not truth seekers, businessmen and not helpers of the poor. They had become subject to the “pride of position, [and] the conservative stubbornness of an easy life.”34 This, anyway, was Colwell’s criticism, and as the subsequent “controversy” made clear, Colwell had apparently touched a nerve and expressed an opinion that others deemed out of bounds. Thus in their responses they never wanted to confront his criticisms with arguments of their own. Such a reaction would have made them look defensive and dignified Colwell’s critique even more with a wordy response. Instead, Colwell’s critics tried to discredit him personally by labeling him an infidel and a socialist. For their

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part, Colwell and his supporters were immensely frustrated by this reaction and ad hominem counterattack. But they also thought that it confirmed their criticism of American clergymen as being more concerned with their reputations and their institutions than with the people they were supposed to serve.35 Colwell and his devotees, therefore, merely dismissed as preposterous the accusation of unbelief. They argued that they, and not their critics, were the true followers of Jesus. They were the ones who cared more about people than institutions. The charge of being socialists, curiously enough, did not seem to bother Colwell and his friends. In fact, they took the supposedly pejorative label and turned it into a further indictment of the ossified institutional church. “‘Socialism,’” wrote William Henry Ruffner, one of Colwell’s most impassioned defenders, “has gotten to be one of the hobgoblin terms to frighten grown-up children with, as if Christianity does not teach socialism from beginning to end. Socialism has no essential connexion with any anti-christian idea whatsoever.”36 And Colwell himself pushed the same argument. He wanted to convince his readers that socialism, far from being inherently atheistic and irreligious, was actually more consonant with Christianity than some of the alternatives. In fact, far from being embarrassed about being called a socialist, Colwell embraced the designation. In his opinion, the socialists were doing the work of Christ better than the so-called Christians. Therefore, rather than fearing socialists, Colwell argued, Christians should be thanking them. “We look upon the whole socialist movement as one of the greatest events of this age,” he proclaimed unabashedly. Colwell acknowledged that some socialists held beliefs that Christians would find objectionable. “It is true,” he wrote, that some “have run into wild errors and mistaken theories.” But he wanted to make clear that “the mistakes of some, or all, by no means set aside or nullify the irrefutable truths they have announced.” It was “a stubborn and wicked conservatism,” Colwell added with growing vitriol, “which is rooted to one spot in this world of evil, refusing to believe in any thing better, . . . offering to Christ this present world as now exhibited, or none.”37 Colwell was an idealist still, and not an embittered realist. Christ came for the sake of humanity, he always emphasized. “His ministry was one of . . . constant attention to human woes and wants.”38 Colwell therefore asserted that the struggle to improve human welfare, far from being tangential to the Christian message, was absolutely central to it. And Christ’s followers, he concluded, if they really were his followers, would recognize this, care about people in the same way that Christ cared about them, and live their lives differently, regardless of the consequences and the criticisms.

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Colwell lived out these maxims for the rest of his life, although national events made him shift his focus to more pressing subjects. In the midst of the New Themes controversy, Colwell opened up another front with two books on Christian politics: Politics for American Christians in 1852; and The Position of Christianity in the United States in Relation with Our Political Institutions in 1854. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, he turned to the sectional crisis and the disaster, financial and otherwise, that civil war would bring. During the war he was appointed to the U.S. Revenue Commission, where he helped draft six reports on manufacturing, trade, taxation, and the currency.39 But even while serving his country during its civil war, Colwell did not lose his first love. In 1861 he authored a pamphlet whose title, The Claims of Labor, and Their Precedence to the Claims of Free Trade, makes clear that he still sought to defend working-class individuals from the people, ideas, and policies that would dehumanize them.

chapter nine

Orestes Brownson Before 1840

b y w a y of introduction, it is important to note that whenever investigating Orestes Brownson’s thoughts on religion and economics, it is always important to ask the question: “Which Orestes Brownson are we talking about?” Most of the thinkers discussed thus far expressed almost the same opinions from their first publications to their last. Regardless of whether they wrote their pieces when they were young, middle-aged, or old, their thoughts often display a remarkable consistency. It was as though they developed their theologies and social philosophies fully in private and then spent the rest of their lives articulating them in their numerous publications. Their diverse writings, of course, were never merely facsimiles, but they were more like variations on a central theme than expressions of truly different opinions at different times. Francis Wayland and Stephen Colwell, for instance, two men who took very different sides in the economic discussions of the day, illustrate this point well. Their thoughts remained internally consistent throughout their adult lives. Colwell exhibited as much European-style radicalism and concern for the working-class underdog in some of his very first publications in the early 1840s as he did in his controversial New Themes for the Protestant Clergy in 1851 and in subsequent works. Similarly, Wayland never wavered from his faith in Scottish common sense philosophy, natural theology, and American millennialism. These schools of thought permeate nearly every page of everything he wrote, from his first “Duties of an American Citizen” in 1825 to his three best-selling textbooks: The Elements of Moral Science 1 23

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(1835), The Elements of Political Economy (1837), and The Elements of Intellectual Philosophy (1854). Orestes Brownson (1803–1876), by contrast, moved all over the spiritual and intellectual map, at least in the first half of his life. And instead of keeping his nascent ideas to himself, waiting for them to mature into a coherent philosophy or theology before sharing them with the world, Brownson’s thoughts seemed to develop only as he wrote about them. Thinkers like Wayland and Colwell, in other words, reached their intellectual maturity before writing. Brownson apparently could reach his only by writing. From his early twenties until his death half a century later in 1876, Brownson wrote incessantly and passionately and has therefore left behind a rich public record of his intellectual development, a record that is obviously full of inconsistencies. Perhaps this fickleness was due to the fact that Brownson received no formal education. Wayland, by contrast, had absorbed common sense philosophy and natural theology from his mentors Eliphalet Nott at Union College and Moses Stuart at Andover Theological Seminary. Or perhaps it was because Brownson’s father had died before his first birthday, thereby depriving him of the opportunity to either inherit or decidedly reject a single religious and intellectual tradition that might have shaped his identity earlier. Biographers, incidentally, have made much of Brownson’s father’s untimely death and the effect that it had on young Orestes’ development. Some make the case that it was Brownson’s subconscious search for a father that led him to Christianity in general and ultimately to Catholicism.1 Such an interpretation, however, is overly teleological. Obviously the death of one’s father would create an identity void in one’s life. But such a loss does not both create the void and determine what ultimately fills it—in Brownson’s situation the Catholic Church with the Pope as father figure. If that were the case, then all orphans would one day convert to Catholicism. Brownson’s loss does help to explain his intellectual and religious fickleness during the first half of his life, though. He was, as it were, left alone to shop for an identity in the confusing religious and intellectual marketplace of antebellum America. But his lack of a father did not predetermine his later conversion to Catholicism. As is explained more fully later, this final religious turn had more to do with Brownson’s evolving understanding of individuals and institutions than it did with his need for a father figure.2 Patrick W. Carey’s excellent biography of Brownson summarizes his life as “a restless search for a balance between freedom and communion in his relations with God, nature, and the human community.” Carey then describes

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Brownson’s intellectual fickleness as the result of the surviving family’s financial, geographical, and psychological instability. After struggling for some time after her husband’s death, Orestes’ mother, Relief Metcalf, sent her six-year-old son to live with friends in a town seventeen miles away. The young Orestes was not reunited with his family until 1817, over seven years later. “These youthful experiences of separation,” Carey concludes, “created in him a strong sense of personal independence, initiative, and self-reliance, but they also put him in a constant search for the communion, continuity, order, and stability that he did not enjoy.” In Carey’s story, these psychological needs ultimately led Brownson to the oldest and most stable community he could find, the Catholic Church. What follows in this and the next chapter is meant to supplement Carey’s attention to “freedom and communion,” but with a more specific look at Brownson’s evolving opinions about individuals and institutions.3 Throughout his adult life, Brownson regularly shifted allegiances and whole philosophies, often vehemently attacking whatever school of thought he had just abandoned, while enthusiastically promoting the school he had just joined. Here, for example, is a very brief summary of the young Brownson’s intellectual and spiritual odyssey. In 1816, in the midst of the Second Great Awakening, the thirteen-year-old Brownson experienced a religious conversion at a local revival. In 1822, he joined the Presbyterian Church but abandoned it only nine months later. After a brief stint as a rationalist, he converted to Universalism in 1824 and was ordained in the church in 1826. He soon found out, however, that he did not like the Universalist idea that there would be no punishment for the wicked, and so he left the church for an even longer stint as a rationalist and social reformer, an episode lasting from late 1829 to the summer of 1832. During this second rationalist phase, Brownson read and was influenced by three of Britain’s most radical social reformers: Robert Owen, Frances Wright, and William Godwin. Along with them he criticized what he considered to be the inexcusable laziness of religious believers who simply waited for justice to be done in the next life. Instead, atheistic rationalist that he was at the time, Brownson devoted himself to reforming life in this world. In his opinion, the clergy were more at fault for their social apathy than those who actually oppressed the poor. Brownson therefore rejected all organized religion and invented his own faith, the principles of which he expressed in two articles in 1829: one simply entitled “My Creed,” and the other, “A Gospel Creed.” The general gist of these “creeds” was that true religion meant obeying the humanitarian spirit of the law and not the

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dogmatic letter of the law—the same distinctions that Stephen Colwell made. Unlike Colwell’s Presbyterian orthodoxy though, Brownson’s “creeds” did not require believing in anything transcendent.4 But once again, Brownson changed his mind, and by 1832 he had come to the conclusion that genuine social reform could come only from genuine religious belief. The world, in other words, needed the transcendent even if people, including ministers, did not fully understand the transcendent. By this time, Brownson had also begun to investigate and correspond with the Unitarians of Boston, whose attention to education and philanthropy he respected. He eventually joined the Unitarians and pastored two churches: the first in Walpole, New Hampshire, from 1832 to 1834 and the second in Canton, Massachusetts, from 1834 to 1836.5 In 1836 Brownson moved to Boston, dabbled in transcendentalism, whose romantic emphasis on mystery he found attractive, and began his writing career in earnest. He first took over the editorship of the Boston Reformer, where he proclaimed his personal motto, “NO PARTY BUT MANKIND,” and later started his very own journal, the Boston Quarterly Review, devoted to defending the rights of individuals against the forces of centralization—a prominent theme of his early life. During this time Brownson also articulated his ideas about an ecumenical and humanitarian “Church of the Future” in his first book, New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church (1836). He founded the short-lived Society for Christian Union and Progress to pursue his goals of religious reform, and in September of that year began attending meetings of Boston’s Transcendentalist Club.6 The analysis in this chapter, however, focuses primarily on the years from 1837 to 1840, when Brownson shifted his attention again to more worldly subjects. In the spring of 1837, the American economy suffered a severe contraction that would last for the next seven years. This collapse was due in part to excessive speculation in western land sales and in part to a restriction on credit that started in the then-troubled banks of England and extended all the way through America’s more established eastern banks to the vulnerable new banks of the western frontier. And as in all economic depressions, the working class suffered the most. Brownson, who had always fashioned himself a defender of the common man, took up their cause with a vengeance. This was, as Patrick Carey puts it, “the beginning of Brownson’s systematic social and economic class analysis”7 —an analysis that would continue, off and on, until it reached its culmination in 1840. Brownson always liked being the outsider with whatever religious group he had associated himself. As a young man, he was intensely individualistic

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and seemed to have hated stifling orthodoxies of any kind. A true contrarian, Brownson would always find and then point out the inconsistencies, oversights, and fallacies (both logical and ethical) of whatever religious or intellectual community he was a part. He was not, however, disingenuous or cavalier in his multiple religious changes of heart. Instead, he always seemed to see first the favorable side of a certain school of thought and later its distasteful excesses. And it was always the excesses of one (Presbyterianism’s doctrines of predestination and limited atonement, for example) that would lead him to embrace its logical opposite (Universalism’s claim that all are saved). But the very thing that had attracted him to this other view soon proved to be yet another distasteful excess (in this case, no divine judgment for the wicked), and Brownson would again jump to another philosophical/theological opposite. Thus he went from Universalism to atheism and then to the somewhat agnostic theism of the Unitarians and the transcendentalists. But after having been drawn to the transcendentalists for their idealist and romantic critique of Unitarianism’s cold rationalism, Brownson after 1837 began critiquing the individualism and subjectivism that were at the heart of the movement and focused instead on the political and economic structures that were harming his cherished American common man. On May 28, 1837, for example, at the very beginning of the financial crisis, Brownson preached a jeremiad entitled “Babylon Is Falling” against the evils of the failing commercial structures; and on May 29 “he attended his last meeting of the Transcendentalist Club.”8 For the next four years, Brownson’s course was set. In the early 1840s, however, Brownson took the most unexpected turn possible and joined the Catholic Church. He also never left it. One way to interpret his conversion is as, ironically, yet another move by a passionate individualist and contrarian—ironic in the sense that the Catholic Church is the one religious institution least tolerant of individualism and contrarianism. But antebellum America was not an easy place to be a Catholic, and perhaps Brownson wanted to identify with the ultimate Christian outsiders of his time and place. In fact, it is worth asking whether Brownson would have converted to Catholicism if he were living in a predominantly Catholic country. Another way to think about Brownson’s conversion, however, is to see it as the logical conclusion to his thoughts about the relationship between individuals and institutions. Before his conversion, the one thing that remained consistent while Brownson sampled one theology after the other was his love for “the people.” Brownson always sided with the underdog—the

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individual, the poor, the oppressed—those whom he thought were being exploited. Brownson firmly believed that centralization, whether in religion, politics, or economics, threatened to crush people, and he considered himself a crusader on their behalf. In a way, in fact, one can say (hopefully without denigrating Brownson’s genuine faith in God) that his primary faith was in “the people” and that most of his theological and social ideas developed from there. Exploring Brownson’s concern for and faith in “the people” is also the best single way to understand his thoughts about the structures of developing capitalism. Whenever Brownson talked about “the people,” however, he really meant the working class. As Brownson’s son Henry put it: “His sympathy with the laboring classes and his interest in them never abated,”9 and this assessment is generally correct. Brownson was extremely class conscious and pro–working class, perhaps more so than any other American in the antebellum period. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in fact, referred to him as “an American Marxist before Marx”10 because of his anachronistic attention to the problems of social stratification and the sometimes revolutionary remedies he proposed. “All classes, each in turn, have possessed the government,” Brownson once argued, “and the time has come for all predominance of class to end; for Man, the People to rule.”11 And never mind what Brownson said about abolishing the idea of class divisions and class rule; whenever he said “Man” or “the People,” he really meant the laboring class. Brownson firmly believed that true virtue, the source of all social progress, existed exclusively among the working class, and that their cause of reform was not in vain. “The lower classes have never been known to make an unjust demand,”12 he once wrote quixotically. “All reforms,” he argued, “come from the lower classes, who are always the sufferers; and they are usually opposed by the higher classes, who live by those very abuses.”13 Such were the injustices of economic inequality that Brownson hated and wanted ameliorated in his lifetime. “The struggle may be long, arduous, and perhaps bloody,” he admitted, “the friends of Humanity may experience more than one defeat; but they will never give over the struggle, or despair of ultimate success.”14 The forces of human progress and divine justice were on their side and would undoubtedly prevail. Unless “God has changed his purposes, and inverted the order of his Providence, it [the forces of ‘the People’] shall come off conqueror; and Man be redeemed.”15 This type of revolutionary rhetoric, or course, did not win Brownson many allies among the middle class. On the contrary, in fact, it cost him a good bit of popular support. “I had rendered myself, so far as known, not a

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little unpopular,” he once wrote, “by my association with the working-men’s party, and my bold and uncompromising defence of the laboring classes.”16 But Brownson was obviously not the type to care very much about criticism, and in a way he thrived on it. In 1840, after having briefly ceased publishing his Boston Quarterly Review, he reported that “some partisan prints [presumably conservative] have spoken harshly of it, since I announced its discontinuance, and this I have regarded as an indication that it was not altogether useless.”17 Thus having provoked the response he was looking for, Brownson was encouraged to resume the journal. In all of his early writings, Brownson never shied away from the charge of being a radical. Instead, like Stephen Colwell, he actually embraced the designation. What Brownson positively loathed, however (also like Colwell), was having his Christian faith called into question because of his social views. In 1839, when he decided to stop publishing the Boston Quarterly Review, he included a short note at the end of the last volume explaining why the journal was coming to a close. And in the final paragraph—what he thought were going to be his last published words—he wrote about himself: The world has called me an infidel, and an agrarian. I am an infidel, I suppose, not because I believe less, but because I believe more than my neighbors. . . . As to agrarianism, I have nothing to say. I am a democrat of long standing, and am determined as long as I live to labor for the great doctrine of equal rights, and social equality.18

Here Brownson crystallized his social and religious identity and ideology— his “character,” to use Alasdair MacIntyre’s term. He was obviously unapologetic about being labeled an “agrarian”—what some might call a radical egalitarian—and claimed that such ideas were logically related to the cherished principles of democracy. But Brownson intensely disliked being called an “infidel.” He sarcastically accepted the title, but sought to invert its meaning, arguing that he was one “not because I believe less, but because I believe more than my neighbors.” What Brownson meant by this was that he was the real Christian, not those who criticized him. Brownson simply hated the insinuation that reform on behalf of the working class was a necessarily un-Christian occupation. Many of his ideas might have been socially subversive, but he freely admitted this. What he wanted to do was prove that his ideas were not inherently anti-religious or “infidel” just because they shook things up. He did have some overt anticlerical opinions that he expressed later in 1840, and which did get him into

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a great deal of trouble, but those were a separate matter and are treated in the next chapter. In general, Brownson loathed economic inequality in all its forms, and he especially hated those, like the clerical economists, who believed that God approved of such inequality in the name of progress and civilization. Those thinkers, Brownson wrote, had supposed it [inequality] a part of the plan of Divine Providence, and that they would be guilty of rebellion against his government, should they question its justice or its necessity. . . . They were told that all the distinctions which disturbed them, all those evils of which they complained, were inseparable from the social state, and could be avoided only by going back to the condition of the savage. The divisions into classes, or rich and poor, high and low, learned and ignorant, were said to be of the highest utility in promoting social order.19

Here one sees, as with the writings of Stephen Colwell, a total inversion of everything the clerical economists held dear. The clerical economists always vaunted commercial civilization as the highest good, and obeying Adam Smith’s laws of free trade and the division of labor as the quickest way to reach that good end and escape “the condition of the savage.” To them, development might bring along with it greater economic inequality, but this was necessary for the overall progress of civilization, a progress that they believed God desired and one that was “of the highest utility” for the majority of humankind. Brownson, however, contested all of these assumptions and values. For one, he believed that “the spirit of reform is in fact the very spirit of the gospel.”20 He also believed that real, godly progress in society could be only in the direction of greater equality, not greater inequality, regardless of its supposed “utility.” More importantly, Brownson disputed the idea that the mere existence of social inequality implied its divine sanction. Social classes, he argued, were a creation not of God but of contingent and sin-saturated history. Whereas the clerical economists argued that God, in all of his wisdom and justice, had actually ordained social classes, Brownson argued that it was historically contingent human beings, in all of their foolishness and injustice, who had created them. Alonzo Potter, for example, in a chapter straightforwardly titled “Inequality Unavoidable,” wrote that differences of ability and intelligence were indelibly rooted in “the constitution of Nature and the dealings of Providence.”21 Brownson could not have disagreed more. “But whence has this evil originated?” he asked about economic inequality. It is not enough to answer that it has originated entirely in the inferiority by nature of the working classes. . . . Nor is it sufficient for our purpose to be told,

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that Providence has decreed that some shall be poor and wretched, ignorant and vulgar; and that others shall be rich and vicious, learned and polite, oppressive and miserable.

Incorporating the very same language of “nature” and “Providence,” Brownson came to entirely different conclusions. No, he maintained, “the cause of the inequality, we speak of, must be sought in history, and be regarded as having its root in Providence, or in human nature, only in the sense in which all historical facts have their origin in these.”22 There was nothing “natural” or “Providential” about inequality at all. Inequality was sinful in both its origin and its unjust continuation. According to Brownson, social inequality was not necessary for the future progress of society, but was instead inherently evil—the peculiar product of humanity’s sordid past, and in particular a past filled with warfare. The position of a laboring class in any society throughout history, Brownson argued, was owing “not, as the advocates of aristocracy ignorantly allege, to the natural inequality with which God creates man,” but “to conquest.” “The laboring class has been always the lower class, poor, and ignorant, and menial,” he continued, “because the tribe or nation, to which it originally belonged, was conquered by another tribe or nation.”23 To Brownson, people like the clerical economists had it all wrong. They argued that God had created people with different abilities and that those people naturally fell into the social class most appropriate to their abilities. Brownson, however, argued that the classes came first, having been created by warfare and injustice, which were abhorrent to God, and then came the stifling and rigid inequalities, which were also abhorrent to God. When thinking about the future, though, Brownson held out the hope that these social inequalities, because they had been created by human beings, could also be dismantled by them; that since they had had an unjust beginning, they could also, with God’s help, have a just end. And this, in his opinion, would be real social progress. In embarking on this crusade for social reform, Brownson always insisted that Jesus and authentic Christianity were of the utmost importance. Brownson hated the misconception that humanitarian reform was necessarily anti-religious, and he desperately wanted to clear himself, and the reform movement in general, of the charge of unbelief. “No man in this community,” he argued, “has preached or written more, during these last ten years, to defend Christianity, and to defend it not only against the Infidel, but also against the Church, than the Editor of this Review.”24 As this quotation makes clear, Brownson obviously had his issues with “the Church,”

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which caused him to be criticized in return, but he also considered himself a Christian and a defender of the true faith against its “Infidel” enemies. In the intellectual and spiritual odyssey of his youth, Brownson had been greatly disappointed to discover that the two most powerful influences in his life, Christianity and humanitarian ideals, were not easily reconciled. “We found,” he wrote, “when we came upon the stage, the advocates of social reform at war with religion, and the friends of religion at war with the social reformers.”25 Brownson therefore actually agreed with the criticism that the ideology of humanitarianism, especially among its first European advocates, was in fact tainted by atheism. “Most of the champions of the people in the old world,” he admitted, “had been, and were at war with religious establishments.” They “had no just appreciation of the Gospel,” he added, “and assigned no place to religion in the new order of things they sought to bring about.”26 Brownson confessed that during a more radical phase of his life he too had shared in this opinion and himself “joined in the opposition to religion.”27 In the end, however, he had come to the conclusion “that the hostility, between the social reformer and the advocate of religion, was accidental and not necessary,” and from “that time up to the present moment,” he wrote—and here is the real turning point of his story—“we have labored uniformly to reconcile the two.”28 Reconciling the two (religion and humanitarian reform) was Brownson’s true purpose in life, at least before his conversion to Catholicism. On the one hand, he admonished atheistic humanitarians to pay attention to religion, warning them that ultimately, “no salutary reform can be effected by infidelity”; and on the other hand, he admonished conservative Christians to pay attention to more than their own souls and their “establishments.” The “spirit of reform,” he argued, “is, in fact, the very spirit of the gospel.”29 But Brownson always devoted more of his time to making Christians progressive than he did to Christianizing his radical friends. He adopted this strategy because he believed that it was by first changing Christians that the atheistic humanitarians would then naturally change their minds. “It is never religion itself that the reformer opposes,” Brownson maintained, but the “foul and unnatural mixture presented him in the place of pure religion.”30 What Brownson wanted to do, therefore, was destroy that “foul and unnatural mixture” and return Christianity to a purer form—a goal that he believed not only would make Christians more genuine disciples of Jesus, but also would make the Christian faith more attractive to infidel reformers. “Jesus was a reformer,” Brownson proclaimed, and so were his apostles.31 The Christian faith was not just supposed to teach followers how

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to die, in other words, but how to live; not just prepare them for the next life, but show them how to walk the earth fully and justly in this one.32 Real Christianity, unadulterated Christianity, the Christianity that Christ had preached, and the one in which Brownson believed, was not opposed to social reform but was instead the ultimate source of reform. In recent times, however, a heresy had grown that, as Brownson warned, “now unmans us and hinders the growth of God’s kingdom.”33 “Pure religion,” in other words, had become adulterated with the particular sins of modernity. Sounding very much like Stephen Colwell in New Themes, Brownson denounced modern American churches and their ministers in no uncertain terms. His critique, in fact, was almost identical to Colwell’s. To put it simply, both of them attacked Christendom in the name of Christ; the institutional church in the name of the church of the New Testament; and the supposed blessings of commercial civilization in the name of “the pure teachings of Christ,” as Colwell had called them.34 Brownson, for his part, articulated this value-laden distinction without reservations or apologies. “That we distinguish between the Christianity of the Church, and the Christianity of Christ,” he wrote bluntly, “we have no disposition to deny,” adding that “we hold the former in low esteem, while we love and reverence the latter.”35 Brownson accused the modern church of having strayed from the intentions of its divine founder. And in having lost its moorings, the church was not merely errant or negligent; it had actually become an enemy to the true spirit of Christ that was supposed to be its animating force. Brownson even went so far as to liken his “conservative brethren” in the ministry to the “scribes and pharisees,” “chief priests,” and “rulers in the synagogues” of Jesus’ day, who had also resisted Christ’s radical message because it threatened their traditions and institutions.36 This, in fact, was the point that Brownson wanted to drive home to his critics. “It is said that we oppose the Church,” he wrote. We “admit that we would abolish it,” he replied. But—and here was the central issue for him—we “admit that we oppose the Church, as it now is.”37 It was not that Brownson disliked the idea of the church—the godly community that Christ had come to inaugurate. Brownson took issue instead with what the church had become. The kingdom of God was supposed to be an invisible fellowship or a family of like-minded disciples, not a visible institution with a hierarchy and rules and self-interested bureaucracy. Such an organization, Brownson claimed, was not merely out of harmony with the true spirit of the gospel, but was its mortal enemy. For him, the modern church had become, in his own harsh words, “an anti-christian institution, . . . a hindrance to the

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spread of Christian truth, to the growth of God’s kingdom in the soul, and on the earth.”38 And in his opinion, the clergy—his “conservative brethren”— were especially to blame. As Colwell had put it in New Themes, using the exact same terminology, this class of ministers was now stuck in “the conservative stubbornness of an easy life.”39 “We find no authority in the New Testament for the support of such a profession,” Brownson argued, and “a separate profession, . . . a sort of trade,” is exactly what the clergy had become. “Consequently,” he concluded, “the great body of the clergy must always be conservatives, and opposed to innovations, changes, progress,” and thus naturally opposed to the radical work of the kingdom of God.40 For Brownson such a state of ecclesiastical affairs was anathema. Christianity and working-class reform were naturally allies rather than enemies. “The gospel is emphatically the workingman’s religion,” he declared, and “Jesus was emphatically the teacher of the masses, the prophet of the people.”41 It was the modern clergy—those who selfishly desired social stability in order to maintain the stability of their own positions and institutions—who had preached a different gospel. The spirit of Jesus, Brownson argued, “in its political aspect, is what I have called the democratic spirit; in its most general aspect, it is the spirit of progress.” And democracy itself, he added, “is nothing but the political application of Christianity.”42 Instead of being separate and antithetical, in Brownson’s optimistic view, religion and democracy were in all truth thoroughly reconciled, fused, and, in the best of worlds, indistinguishable. Brownson might have been revolutionary when it came to ecclesiastical institutions, but this sentiment did not extend to America’s political and economic institutions. Brownson, in fact, simply loved America. In spite of all its faults, which he knew well, he still thought that it was the working man’s paradise. For example, in the middle of an article about a new labor organization in Boston—a place where a partisan would usually denounce the injustices of the structures oppressing workers—Brownson actually praised America for the freedoms and opportunities it provided. “The fact then of the organization of this association,” he wrote cheerfully, “is a proof of the comparatively good condition of the working-men in this country.”43 And as he wrote elsewhere, ironically sounding like the anti-union ideologue, Alonzo Potter: “taking our country throughout, the condition of the proletary population has been, and is altogether superior here to what it is in any other part of the civilized world.”44 What Brownson ultimately wanted in his social reforms was a purer and more authentic democracy. The means of achieving this democracy, however, was another matter. While Brownson

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believed that the impulse to reform came from the Christian faith, he did not, as one might suspect, believe that reform should come through the corrupt institution of “the Church.” Instead, he believed that reform should take place through the American mechanisms of political democracy and economic opportunity. Brownson feared, however, that the peculiar national blessings that had made political democracy and economic opportunity possible would not last, and that America would eventually follow in the footsteps of European nations with all of their rigid social hierarchies and gross injustices. “Our economical systems are virtually those of England,” he lamented. “What is to prevent the reproduction of the same state of things in relation to our laboring population with that which gangrenes English society?”45 And the answer to this question, he realized, was not a happy one. He knew, as he put it, that the privileges the American working class enjoyed were not a result “of more enlightened systems of social, political, or domestic economy,” but were “owing to causes purely accidental”—causes, he continued, “which are rapidly disappearing.”46 The main source of American working-class freedom, Brownson informed his readers, “has consisted in the low price of land” and the “ease with which individuals have been able to procure them farms, and pass from the class of proletaries to that of proprietors.” But, Brownson warned, “the wilderness has receded, and already the new lands are beyond the reach of the mere laborer, and the employer has him at his mercy.” Thus, in 1840, he direly but accurately predicted that in half a century there would be virtually nothing “to prevent the reproduction here, in our land of boasted equality, of the order of things which now exists in the old world.”47 America, in other words, would become another European nation, and the “great evil of all modern society” would come to haunt this country as well: “the division of the community into two classes, one of which owns the funds, and the other of which performs the labor.”48 Nevertheless, hoping against hope and inspired by the “democratic spirit”49 of Jesus Christ, Brownson set out to defend the American people whom he loved and in whom he had placed so much of his faith. “The specific contest, then, in which the whole world is engaged,” he wrote in 1841, “is the only one appropriate to the present time,—between the Money power and the Democratic,” between “the unprivileged many,” he wrote elsewhere, “in opposition to the privileged few.”50 And for those who thought they could avoid the conflict, he argued that it was simply impossible “to attempt neutrality.”51 To borrow a phrase from a different time, Brownson

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believed that if an individual was not a part of the solution, he was a part of the problem. And in his opinion, the lines were clearly drawn; people had to choose with which party they were going to side. These “two armies,” he added, continuing the martial metaphor, “are waiting but the signal to rush to the terrible encounter, if indeed the battle have [sic] not already begun.”52 Brownson, of course, considered himself one of the generals in the army of democracy against “the Money power,” but some of his intellectual plans of attack actually backfired and ultimately did more harm to his cause than good. Ever the purist, Brownson was not afraid to pursue some of his ideas to their logical conclusions, no matter how impolitic those conclusions or the timing of their publication might be. An avowed enemy of all unjust social stratification, Brownson desired for his fellow Americans a true equality of opportunity, but not an equality of condition. “This struggle,” as he described it, between the party of privilege and that of equality, “can be ended only by giving to all, not equal wealth, but equal chances to wealth.” There will always be natural inequalities, he confessed, and the “wisest and best . . . have a legitimate right to rule in church, society and state,” but as Brownson complained, many who had power were less than deserving of it. What Brownson wanted therefore was a true meritocracy, “an ‘open field and fair play,’ a theatre on which man may enact all his greatness.” He did believe that the cream of society should rise to the top; he just wanted to make sure that it would.53 How he advocated doing this was where he got into trouble. As he expressed it: “To have equal chances all must have the same starting-point,”54 and it was this idea of “the same starting-point”—an idea with which most Americans would have agreed—that Brownson carried to its logical, although unpopular extreme. The proposal was rather simple: hereditary property was the main obstacle to a truly level playing field. To Brownson, an individual who inherited wealth possessed an unfair advantage, a head start so to speak, in the race of life, and so he wanted to get rid of it. We “have abolished hereditary monarchy and hereditary nobility,” he argued, “we must complete the work by abolishing hereditary property,” and he knew that his proposal was going to create a controversy.55 For instance, immediately after he broached the idea he appended an almost page-long footnote in which he acknowledged the inflammatory nature of the subject and expressed his desire that all subsequent criticism be directed to him and him alone and not to any of his acquaintances.56 He also took steps to defend himself against those anticipated criticisms. He argued that abolishing hereditary property “is merely a logical conclusion from the admitted

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premises of the American people, and a fortiori, of the democratic party.” What, Brownson asked, was the fundamental American ideal if “not the abolition of all artificial distinctions, all social advantages founded on birth or any other accident, and leaving every man to stand on his own feet.”57 All he wanted to do therefore was take this ideal of equal opportunity and implement it fully. Brownson also wanted to make clear that while he was an enemy of hereditary property, he was not an enemy of property itself. “We are not destructionists,” he wrote. “We do not touch the rights of property, and would not, except to render them more secure.”58 And, in all truth, Brownson was indeed the advocate of property that he claimed to be. Sometimes he even sounded like Francis Wayland or some other natural theologian when he argued that human beings had an “innate sense of property” and were endowed “with faculties for its acquisition.” Thus, he reasoned, “the Creator has plainly declared it his will, that man should possess property.” Brownson even used this point to argue against the idea of common property, another conservative bugbear. “The very essence of property is individual,” he wrote, “peculiar, exclusive. . . . The ideas of mine and thine are among the earliest developed in the human mind.”59 In short, Brownson was no communist. On the contrary, in many ways he outdid even the staunchest Lockean liberal in his insistence on the sanctity of individual property.60 But it was at this point that Brownson created problems both for himself and for others. Brownson seemed to love starting with conservative premises, with which he thought most Americans would agree, and then take them to their logical but radical conclusions. In this instance, he took the quintessentially American dislike of social distinctions and unfair advantages and used it to argue against the unfair advantage of inherited wealth. He also started with the cherished principle of individual property rights and took it to the same radical conclusion—the abolition of hereditary property. An individual, after all, had “a sacred and divine right to the proceeds of his own industry, and if one produces more than another, he should have more.”61 A man could thus amass as much wealth as possible, provided it was the fruit of his own labor—an important stipulation—but his ownership and even stewardship of that wealth ended at death. This, in Brownson’s opinion, was the only way to constantly ensure a level playing field for the players. Taking as his starting point “our American system, that blood should make no distinction, that society has no right to reward the child according to the merit, nor to punish him according to the demerit of the father,” he contended, “then

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it follows, that the child stands in relation to the property of the father, precisely as stands any other individual, having equal and only equal claims to the inheritance.”62 Ever the gadfly, Brownson enjoyed shaking up people’s view of the world. In attacking hereditary property, he knew that he was going to generate criticism. But as we will see in the next chapter, he ended up getting much more than he bargained for. In short, he had no idea of the size, virulence, and permanent effects of the controversy that his opinions were going to create. Brownson’s articulation of these, his most radical opinions, in fact forever altered the course of his life and perhaps the life of the nation.

chapter ten

Orestes Brownson After 1840

u n b e k n o w n s t to him, in 1840 Orestes Brownson began a journey that would transform him from a passionate critic of economic inequality into an almost Smithian enthusiast of international markets and economic order. His changing perspective on developing capitalism, however, was only part of a larger process in which he revolutionized his understanding of individuals and institutions, and the relationship that existed between them. The turning point in this transformation was also the climax of Brownson’s social radicalism—his advocating for the abolition of hereditary property. Curiously enough, Brownson championed this revolutionary cause only once in his life, in a series of articles entitled “The Laboring Classes” that he published in the July and October issues of the 1840 Boston Quarterly Review; and while there were precedents for the ideas he articulated there, it is difficult to say exactly why he made his case so forcefully and provocatively at that particular time. From a political perspective, in fact, the timing could not have been worse. Eighteen forty was an election year and a particularly close presidential campaign raged between Democratic incumbent Martin Van Buren and Whig challenger William Henry Harrison. Looking to exploit any misstep or questionable statement by their opponents, the Whig propaganda machine seized on Brownson’s incendiary proposals in “The Laboring Classes” and reprinted and distributed the article in hopes that the Democrats would hang themselves with their own words.1 Calvin Colton, a longtime Whig partisan, also went on the attack, warning his readers that Brownson’s crusade against hereditary property, among other cherished institutions, would 1 39

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no doubt become policy in the next Van Buren administration. Colton also argued that Brownson’s strange and radical ideas were not the work of a lone fanatic, but were heartily, if silently, endorsed by the whole of the Democratic Party. “The Boston Quarterly Review,” he argued, is “well known and accepted as the organ and oracle of the national [Van Buren] administration for New England.” If Brownson had merely expressed his own opinions, Colton explained, and not those of his party, he “might and should have been rebuked” by the Democrats for attacking so many things that average Americans held dear. “But,” he continued, “there has been silence. Nay, not silence. There has been commendation—pointed, distinct, emphatic, wide spread commendation in the journals of the administration.”2 The real reaction among leading Democrats, of course, could hardly have been further from the “commendation” that Colton described. Party leaders quickly moved to silence Brownson or at least force him to print a retraction. Brownson, however, always reveling in the “character” of the gadfly, would not be swayed, and he ultimately paid a serious price for his intransigence. The Democrats disowned Brownson, and Martin Van Buren supposedly held him personally responsible for his ultimate defeat in the presidential election that year.3 Biographer Thomas Ryan suggests that Brownson’s reasons for “publishing his essay on ‘The Laboring Classes’ when he did” were more personal than political. Drawing on some of Brownson’s retrospective writings, Ryan argues that prior to 1840 Brownson had been thought of as a rising star in the Democratic Party, but that “the more prominent he became in the party, . . . the less free he felt to follow his own convictions.” Supposedly, Brownson also began “to feel the workings of political ambition, and scarcely dared to trust himself any longer.” Thus, yet again chafing under the yoke of institutional restraints, Brownson published “The Laboring Classes” as a kind of declaration of intellectual independence from the party orthodoxy. He did not intend to sabotage the Democratic presidential campaign—he was, in fact, devastated by Van Buren’s defeat—but the timing of the essay is telling. Feeling threatened when the party machinery shifted into high gear and party leaders insisted that members suppress their differences in order to present a united front against their common political enemy, Brownson lashed out and published the most inflammatory piece of his career. And although publishing “The Laboring Classes” when he did came at a great personal and political price, Brownson, ever the champion of the individual, immodestly wrote in hindsight that “there was something in it bordering on moral heroism, which has not been without its reward.”4 In addition to

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losing a party, though, Brownson also lost a great deal of support for his own publishing venture, the Boston Quarterly Review. After printing “The Laboring Classes” in the July issue, the regular contributors to the Review “quietly shied away from him,” and he was forced to fill the entire October issue by himself.5 In that October issue, Brownson published his second essay on “The Laboring Classes.” In his second piece, he clarified and defended his positions in the first article. This follow-up piece filled over 90 of the 120 pages of the journal and began with a counterattack against the Democratic Party. Brownson asserted that those who speak for truth (here, meaning himself) should never be concerned with the political timing of their utterances and definitely should never be silenced by any outside authority. He therefore considered the Democrats’ effort to censor him a disgusting and hypocritical abandonment of the very principles of democracy for which they supposedly stood, and he attacked the “dictators of opinions” at the head of the party with the same invective he usually reserved for the Whigs. The Democratic Party, he warned, had become “an army under the control and ready to follow the beck of a few, perhaps designing, unprincipled chiefs . . . who can adroitly place themselves at its head.”6 But in spite of Brownson’s harsh criticisms of the Democrats, he too was devastated by their loss at the polls. In fact, this election precipitated a major crisis and turning point in his life. Brownson later wrote in retrospect that, when speaking of the election of 1840, “we must say that it marks an epoch in our . . . political and social doctrines.” On “two or three questions of very great importance,” he wrote elsewhere, “the election of 1840 helped revolutionize my opinions.”7 This crisis or “revolution,” however, came not because Brownson felt guilty about his possible role in Van Buren’s defeat or because he felt betrayed by the Democratic Party, but because he felt betrayed by America and the American people. In fact, two of the “questions of very great importance” on which Brownson changed his mind after 1840 were his fundamental understanding of “the people,” and of the democratic political process. After the election, he wrote, “we—that is the writer of this—have pretty much ceased to speak of, or to confide in, the ‘intelligence of the people.’” What “we saw during the presidential election of 1840, shook, nay, gave to the winds,” he emphasized, “all our remaining confidence in the popular democratic doctrines.” Brownson, in short, was disgusted “to find how easily the enthusiasm of the people could be excited by [the] hard cider and doggerel rhymes” of the Whig Party and brokenhearted when he realized that

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there were few measures that could “hinder them from making themselves cattle.”8 As a result, Brownson was deeply distressed about the future prospects of humanitarian reform in American democracy, and especially the effort to ameliorate economic inequality. The most important conflict in political and social life throughout the ages, as he saw it, had always been the one “between MAN and MONEY.” In a democracy, however, the young Brownson had had faith that “whenever we could get this question fairly before the country,” the forces of man “being altogether the most numerous, could at any time out-vote” the forces of “Money.” That was why ever since 1837, he had devoted so much energy to defending the American people against exploitative political and economic structures. He simply had faith that the American voter, once adequately armed with the truth, would make the right political decisions and keep the money power at bay. But the election of 1840, the critical moment when the people could make their voice heard, destroyed this faith as well, and Brownson changed rapidly from a reforming idealist to what might be called a cynical realist. In 1843, for example, he wrote despondently: “The party of Money will always carry the day. The history of the world offers no instance in which,—man on one side, and money on the other,—money has not triumphed. The Haves carry it always over the Have-nots.”9 Thus after 1840 Brownson basically gave up hope in progressive causes and, as one biographer put it, began his “gradual turn to the right.”10 In 1842 he opposed Thomas W. Dorr’s “rebellion” to extend the suffrage of Rhode Island, and he later opposed the European revolutionaries of 1848. He even went so far as to recommend that the French radical press be shut down or forcibly restrained during times of revolutionary agitation because it excited the irreligious lower classes. And as early as November of 1844, Brownson, the former religious contrarian and social radical, had become a conservative Catholic with political beliefs so reactionary that not even the Whigs would publish him.11 The big question for biographers is why did Brownson make such a dramatic ideological turn? What was the most important, most fundamental change in him that caused all of the other changes? One interpretation, mentioned above, is that the election of 1840 caused Brownson to lose his faith in “the people,” and there is a great deal of truth in this view of things. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., for example, writes that Brownson’s faith “in the people had meant to him what faith in God meant to most men.” And indeed, throughout all of Brownson’s theological sea changes, his understanding of

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and faith in “the people” remained remarkably consistent. In many ways, the supposed virtue of “the people” was the real foundation of his being, and striving to improve their lot in life Brownson’s reason for being. Thus, Schlesinger adds, “in the people’s defeat [in 1840] he lost a shining faith that did not return. The people had sold their birthright for a barrel of cider, and Brownson never forgave them.”12 The election, in short, shook him to his foundations. Brownson might have had multiple religious turning points in the first half of his life, as he regularly modified his understanding of the divine, but he had only one crisis of faith in “the people,” and it changed him forever. As he wrote in retrospect: “I spoke of 1840 as having worked a revolution in my opinion,” and it was indeed the most significant revolution of his entire life.13 While accepting Schlesinger’s interpretation—supported as it is by the words of Brownson himself—that his turn to the right was touched off by the election of 1840 and his subsequent crisis of faith in “the people,” there were also other deeper forces at work in his life that more adequately explain the bigger picture of his religious and ideological reversal. Brownson did, in fact, feel betrayed by “the people” in whom he had put so much faith and for whom he had worked so tirelessly. But while still focusing on this central issue of his view of the people, the more fundamental change in these years of transition was Brownson’s understanding of what a person is and, in particular, how a person is defined in relation to institutions, be they religious, political, or economic. Brownson had always been fascinated by the ethical questions of self and society. Throughout his literary career he wrote countless articles in which he explored the nature of personhood and the relationships that can or should exist between the individual and institutions, other individuals, and God—the ultimate Other. In his early writings, however, Brownson had articulated more of a classic liberal understanding of the person and the person’s relationships to others and to society. He therefore argued that the individual needed to be protected from the encroachments of social, political, religious, and economic institutions. The person as defined by liberalism did not need such institutions or communities to help actualize the self. Instead, Brownson viewed those outside collectivities primarily as hindrances or threats to the individual’s pursuit of autonomy. In Brownson’s own life, these liberal ideas peaked in “The Laboring Classes,” where he argued that equality demanded that individuals not be imposed on by any institution or other individuals, including one’s family. That is why he believed there should be no hereditary property and no sharing of property

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in marriage. The individual should be left entirely to himself or herself, separated as much as possible from the influence of other people, communities, and institutions, and thus free to become whatever he or she wanted to become. Only a few years after publishing “The Laboring Classes,” however, Brownson thoroughly abandoned this radical individualism and embraced yet another philosophical opposite—Pierre Leroux’s “life by communion.” And instead of being one more passing intellectual fad in his life, this humanist doctrine first shattered and then permanently reformed Brownson’s philosophical foundation. A contemporary of Brownson, Pierre Leroux (1797–1871) was a French philosopher who had grown tired of his discipline’s reigning individualism and epistemological solipsism. “The starting point of his philosophy, therefore, was humanity, not the isolated ego,” Patrick W. Carey writes. “The human person was not an isolated soul, but existed always in relationship, and unless that total human situation were part of the philosophical analysis, philosophy would erroneously perceive the human person as an individual and not as a social being, and as inherently a member of the human community.” For Brownson, Carey adds, “the theological implications of what he had been reading in Leroux struck him like a bolt of lightning,” providing “a necessary antidote to the rampant individualism of modern culture that manifested itself in an emerging capitalism . . . and religious subjectivism.” Thus, Carey concludes, the central factor in Brownson’s ideological turn after 1840 was not merely a disillusionment with “the people” who had chosen a Whig for president, but a new emphasis on community instead of the isolated self.14 In seeking to explain Brownson’s transformation and its impact on his thoughts about capitalist economics, the rest of this chapter will build on Carey’s attention to the role of community in Brownson’s life, but will focus primarily on his changed understanding of institutions and the positive role that he now thought they played in forming individuals within communities and into communities. Fundamental to Brownson’s transformation was a revolution in the way he viewed the past. He had always been acutely conscious of history, but after 1840 the moral lens through which he viewed the past changed dramatically. To use the language of the Bible, the young Brownson had focused on “the sins of the fathers”—those evils and structural injustices that one generation bequeaths to the next. As quoted in the previous chapter, Brownson believed that “the cause of the inequality, we speak of, must be sought in history.”15 “Never, till within these last few centuries,” he wrote elsewhere, “were men, able and willing to work, brought to the starving point in times of peace, and

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in the midst of plenty.”16 The problems of the present, in other words, were the results of past injustices, and apparently injustices only “within these last few centuries.” After 1840, however, Brownson viewed his peculiar historical inheritance in a positive light, embodying what could be called, in classical conservative terms, the “wisdom of our ancestors.”17 He therefore viewed as fools and impossible dreamers those—including his younger self and his former intellectual mentors—who sought “to cut loose from the past, and to create an entirely new social and industrial order.”18 Brownson’s harsh language here and his general turn to the right, however, did not mean that he gave up all of his previous reforming zeal. He still recognized the evils of the world and wanted to remedy them. What had changed was the way he sought to remedy them. In 1842 Brownson wrote an article whose very title, “Reform and Conservatism,” illustrates the ideological transformation he was going through at the time—a transformation that centered on a renewed historical consciousness and respect for tradition. In the article, Brownson insisted that “the true reformer retains ever a hold on the past, while he labors for the future.” Therefore, those “who would so divest us, so cut us loose from all tradition,” he argued, “must ever be as impotent as they are mistaken.” “We, of to-day,” he added, emphasizing again the goodness of his contemporary inheritance, “are enlarged by all the past accumulations of the race.” “Divest us of all tradition, of all that we have derived from the past,” he continued—now sounding like a clerical economist in his extolling the virtues of civilization—“and we were mere naked savages, without industry, science or art.”19 “Nothing would be gained, but all that has been gained would be thrown away,” including—he added rather poignantly—our very selves. “We are only what the past has made us,” Brownson now believed, and “no man can divest himself of himself. . . . There is no throwing them off, for to throw them off would be to throw off not merely what we have, but who we are.”20 This is where Brownson’s identity transformation and his ideological transformation can be seen as one and the same. His opinion of institutions and his understanding of himself, in other words, were linked. This is what Alasdair MacIntyre might refer to as a shift in “characters” within the life of a single individual. If, as MacIntyre describes it, “characters” are “the moral representatives of their culture . . . because of the way in which moral and metaphysical ideas and theories assume through them an embodied existence in the social world,” then Brownson was definitely on his way to becoming the “embodied representative” of a radically different set of “moral and metaphysical ideas.”21 Or as Charles Taylor puts it: “Selfhood

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and the good, or in another way selfhood and morality, turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes.”22 When ideas about the self change, in other words, the self changes “characters,” and that new “character” has a decidedly different understanding of morality and “the good.” Brownson was keenly aware that he was at a turning point in his life and, unsurprisingly, he reflected on it in his public writings. “‘When I was a child,’” he wrote, quoting “the blessed Apostle, ‘I thought as a child, I spake as a child; but, when I became a man I put away childish things.’” “If I had been asked twenty years ago to solve the problem [of working-class poverty],” he added, reflecting on the rashness and impudence of his youth, “I should have solved it instantly, without the least hesitation.” But, he continued, with a humility not found in his earlier writings, the longer I live, the more I see of life, and the more I perceive of the complication of all questions, . . . the less confidence I have in my own ability, and the less willing I am to bring forward my own solutions, or attempted solutions. . . . So when we grow older and extend our observations, learn more of the infinite complexity of life, more of our own weakness and folly, and our need of order, of stays and helps to our virtue, we cease to protest, and come to look upon what we had foolishly thought was our enemy as almost the only friend we have left.

In this sensitive, almost melancholic passage, Brownson again venerated the past “which has made us what we are” and “the old institutions which have come down to us,” and come down, he argued, for our own good.23 “As we grow older, sadder, and wiser,” he wrote in yet another introspective passage, and pass from Idealists to Realists, we change all this [na¨ıve revolutionary aspirations], and learn that the only true way of carrying the race forward is through existing institutions. We plant ourselves, if on the sad, still on the firm reality of things, and content ourselves with gaining what can be gained with the means existing institutions furnish.

This quotation encapsulates Brownson’s transformation. Displaying a remarkable sense of self-awareness, Brownson described his evolution “from Idealist to Realist,” from a dreamer and revolutionary to a resigned but still hopeful conservative—and central to that transformation, he made clear, was his newfound respect for “existing institutions.”24 Brownson had also reversed his opinions about individuals as well as institutions. In “The Laboring Classes,” for example, he had advocated a sort of hyper-liberalism in which all individuals would compete on a level

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playing field, and none receive unfair advantages or disadvantages because of family background. A person, in other words, was whatever he made of himself during the course of his life. A mere three years later, however, Brownson disdained this liberal understanding of the person. “We never cultivate ourselves by direct efforts and self-culture,” he maintained, now clearly showing the impact of Pierre Leroux’s doctrine of communion: We can live and grow only in the bosom of society. . . . As isolated individuals, we have and can have no control. Much depends on who were our parents and ancestors; on the community in which we are born and brought up; on the early training we receive; the early bias given to our minds and affections; and the habits we are suffered to contract before we are old enough to reflect and judge for ourselves.25

Renouncing liberal notions of personhood, Brownson now insisted that a person simply is what his family and his society makes him—inheriting from them not only money but also self-defining values and traditions. Brownson found personal comfort in this more organic understanding of the self, but he was also troubled by its implications for humanitarian social reform—the raison d’ˆetre of the first half of his life—and from 1841 to 1844 he struggled to reconcile the two. Still wanting to help working-class individuals, he did not know how to work toward such a goal given his growing respect for tradition. In the end, somewhat sadly, he jettisoned his radical faith in “the people” and replaced it with a thoroughly conservative faith in the wisdom of educated leaders and time-tested institutions. By 1844 the transformation was complete and Brownson was articulating an almost total reversal of everything he had written in “The Laboring Classes.” In August of that year, he even devoted an entire lecture to exposing the folly of those whom he now called the “QUACK REFORMERS,” who, like his younger self, placed too much of their trust in the virtue and intelligence of “the people.”26 Brownson’s criticism of “the people” began innocuously. In 1841 he merely raised questions about the accepted notion “that majorities can do no wrong” and that all that is needed for right government in a democracy “is universal education, which shall enable all to see and comprehend their rights and interests.”27 But soon Brownson was attacking “the people” with just as much passion and frequency as when he had defended them in his youth. “We own, therefore, that the older we grow,” he wrote in 1843, again linking his change in political philosophy to changes in his own life, “and the longer we study in that school, the only one in which fools will

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learn, the more danger do we see in popular passions, and the less is our confidence in the wisdom and virtue of the people.”28 Before, the people could do no wrong. They were the virtuous ones who were being exploited by greedy industrialists and oppressed by shameless politicians. Democracy and organized labor, Brownson once believed, were their best earthly hope for salvation. Now, however, Brownson thought that the people could do nothing right and that while they did not deserve to be either exploited or oppressed, they actually needed the order that the institutions of church and commerce brought to their lives as well as the enlightened guidance of wise clergy and businessmen.29 Brownson now believed that “wisdom and virtue” were not innate qualities of the people but had to be articulated for them and handed down to them by society’s natural leaders. In 1843, in his Oration on the Scholar’s Mission—an address that was bound to be elitist—he proclaimed his distrust of “public opinion” and his new faith in “the wise” as opposed to “the many.” As he put it, he had nothing but contempt for the idea that “vox populi est vox Dei.” If “you would save the people,” he contended, “you must often oppose them.” And then, most likely including himself among those martyred by the very people they had hoped to serve, he concluded dolefully: No advance has ever yet been made, but it has been opposed by them [the people], especially by those they follow as their trusted leaders. Every true prophet and priest, is at first martyred by them. They were the people, who condemned Socrates to drink hemlock; they were the people, who cried out against one infinitely greater than Socrates, “Crucify, crucify him.” The real benefactor of his race, is always calumniated as a public enemy.30

Apparently Brownson—a gadfly just like Socrates—was tired of being unappreciated, and he resented the rejection of “the people,” whom he now considered beneath him. Brownson’s new and thorough distrust of “the people” had radical implications for his thoughts about the possibility of reform in both religious and economic life. As he now believed: “All our reformers proceed on the false assumption, that man is sufficient for his own redemption.” “From man you can get only man,” he objected, “and from perverted man, only perverted man.”31 Brownson therefore focused his attention instead on the debate over what is “sufficient” for both individual and social salvation. This seemingly strange concept of “sufficiency,” in fact, surfaces over and over again from 1841 to 1844 in many of his writings on religion, institutions,

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and social reform. “Here is the fundamental vice of all modern schemes of reform,” he declared with characteristic grandiosity. “We plant ourselves on the all-sufficiency of man, and then wonder that we fail, and that, after three hundred years of efforts at reform, nothing is gained.” “Man is, in no sense, sufficient for himself,” he continued, before arriving at his real point: “Taking it for granted, now, that reforms are possible only by means of superhuman aid, and that this aid comes to us through some institution, that is, some divinely instituted medium, we may ask, What is this institution?”32 It should be obvious where Brownson was going with this line of argument. The institution was not the democratic state, although Brownson had previously thought that it was, nor was it the “Church of the Future” that he had invented back in 1836. Both of these institutions came from human beings and were therefore incapable (“insufficient”) of elevating human beings above their own degraded level. Now sharing the clerical economists’ love for the science of physics, Brownson instructed his readers: The fulcrum of your lever must rest on another body than the one you propose to raise. If we have no standpoint out of man, no point of support in God himself, then have we no means of elevating man or society.

And then he challenged his readers with perhaps the most daring intellectual proposition of his career: “Either there is already existing the Divine Institution, the Church of God, or there are no means of reform.”33 By the spring and summer of 1844, Brownson was clearly on the road to the Roman Catholic Church and was also now “glorying in the label ‘conservative’ which he used to designate his own position.”34 Later that year, on October 20, 1844, he “was formally received into the Catholic Church”—finally finding there, as Patrick W. Carey puts it, “the antidote to individualism and no-churchism, [the] twin evils in American society” that he now so thoroughly repudiated.35 Religiously speaking, Brownson reasoned, because “the sinner is not adequate to the work of his own moral redemption,” he therefore needed a mediator, Christ the God-man, and an ever-present mediating institution, the Catholic Church, to effect his redemption.36 Brownson’s new perspective on human frailty and the need for powerful external institutions also colored his thoughts about the social and economic reforms he had long advocated. Informed as he was by a new sense of realism, Brownson gradually came to the conclusion that the goal of eradicating economic inequality, although laudable, was ultimately utopian. Sinful human beings, he admitted, were simply incapable of such noble achievements through their own deluded and scattered efforts. If the goal of

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social and economic reform were ever to be accomplished—and Brownson had his doubts—it would not be through radical political mobilization, but through personal religious faith and the powerful mediating institution of the Catholic Church. “I have pored over this question of social wrongs and social evils for many a long year,” Brownson proclaimed in an address full of self-reflection and resignation: “I have given to it the best years of my life, my purest and sincerest thoughts . . . [and] I have come to believe that no new solution of the problem is needed, or to be sought. The solution is given us in our faith as Christians. . . . It is in the Gospel.”37 Similarly, in an article tellingly entitled “No Church, No Reform,” Brownson proclaimed that “if the Church be essential to individual salvation, so is it essential to social salvation.”38 Thus Brownson’s spiritual journey and his changing views about social reform came to the same conclusion—a point that again indicates their interrelatedness. By late 1844 Brownson believed that salvation, whether it was individual and eternal, or social and temporal, came through the single, divine, and centuries-old institution of the Catholic Church.39 By way of conclusion, Brownson’s adoption of Pierre Leroux’s “doctrine of communion,” as well as his newfound appreciation for institutions, is also the best way to understand his changing thoughts about developing market capitalism. The young Brownson had always opposed industrialism, which he saw as creating a competitive society and contributing to working-class misery. Interestingly though, because of his hostility toward industrial development, the young Brownson—Democrat that he was—also hated the Whig program of high tariffs to protect American industry, and he actually supported, although ambivalently, the notion of free trade. “The system of free trade,” he wrote in “The Laboring Classes” of all places, “we approve, as a means of social amelioration; but we cannot rely on it, as alone sufficient.” But continuing with a criticism that would have revolted any clerical economist, he added: if “the system of free trade be pushed to its last results, it becomes the introduction of a system of universal competition, a system of universal strife, where each man is for himself, and no man for another.”40 There is no Smithian optimism here about a benevolent “invisible hand” guiding self-interested economic actors toward a greater collective good. Instead there is nothing but “universal strife” with no redeeming social consequences. And to add to this, Brownson predicted that if industrial development continued, there would one day be a war that would be “more than a war between nations”—it would be “a war between two social elements; between the aristocracy and the democracy, between the people and their masters.” “Commerce has indeed spread her meshes

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all over the world,” he then warned, but “she cannot hold it quiet.”41 In 1840 Brownson believed that revolutionary violence on behalf of oppressed workers was inevitable. A mere three years later, however, Brownson was well on his way to becoming an economic realist. Desiring to repudiate the hyper-individualism of his youth and his earlier belief in the “supposed anti-Christian character of trade and business in general,” Brownson in 1843 exalted trade as “the grand medium of intercourse between Community and Community, . . . and therefore a grand promoter of man’s communication with man.” He even had complimentary words for the individual managers of the commercial machine—those whom he had previously thought of as the chief oppressors of the poor. “Of industrial reforms properly so called, we speak not,” he avowed once again, and then added: We leave this matter to the natural chiefs of industry, that is, to bank presidents, cashiers, and directors. . . . We have no reproach to bring. But ye are able to place our industry on its right basis, and we call upon you to do it.42

He no longer advocated revolution, but rather wanted to work within the system and with those who controlled it—the leaders who could provide order for the uneducated masses. Brownson also never said anything again about the inheritance of property—the issue that had caused such a stir in 1840. But his subsequent strong arguments in favor of private property in general—which he had never opposed in the first place—lead one to believe that he simply wanted to abandon the idea quietly and not remind readers of his onetime radical proposal.43 Brownson did, however, repudiate outright his former socialist mentors—Robert Owen, William Godwin, Charles Fourier, and Saint-Simon—all of whom, in his new opinion, foolishly denied the interconnectedness of human civilization and falsely believed that a community could “be self-sufficing,” “a little world in itself.”44 In 1843 Brownson could criticize socialism with confidence because he had recently experienced its failings. In a last gasp of anti-institutional radicalism, Brownson in 1842 had become enamored with the Brook Farm community in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Founded only a year before by the transcendentalist George Ripley, the social experiment was intended to be a model Christian community, “enlarging and extending the sphere of the family into society . . . without destroying or absorbing the individual.”45 Having recently fallen under the influence of Leroux’s “doctrine of communion,” Brownson saw in Brook Farm an attempt to live out the principles of that doctrine in real life. Brownson soon found out, however, that something

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within the community was not working as planned. As Patrick W. Carey describes the episode: Brownson was initially so fond of the Brook Farm experiment that he placed his fourteen-year-old son Orestes Jr. with the community sometime during the summer or fall of 1842. Within less than a year, however, Orestes Jr. wanted out of the community so he could become a sailor.46

To add to this, in the very same year, a close friend of his and a fellow religious seeker, Isaac Thomas Hecker, had similarly joined the Brook Farm community but then also left it dissatisfied. Although Brook Farm itself would survive until 1847, by September 1843, Brownson had had his fill of social experiments and, in a letter to Hecker, wrote dismissively that “‘these communities after all are humbugs.’”47 A few years later Brownson was decidedly less gentle in his critique of radical social experimentation. In one bitter piece, he attacked specifically the political theories of French socialist Charles Fourier, one of his earlier, most profound intellectual influences, and he repented personally for his precocious attempt “to translate Christianity into Socialism.” In retrospect he said that he could still understand the attraction of socialism—its goals, he maintained, were all worthwhile—but that it was ultimately “a heresy” and “a damnable radicalism.”48 Having put his childish ways behind him, so to speak, Brownson now argued that a “Community must recognize and conform to the general laws of industry and business,” and in particular the laws of free trade and the international division of labor. No community could ever be “a complete whole in itself,” he wrote, perhaps thinking of Brook Farm, but “should confine itself to some one branch of industry, for which it is best situated.” Continuing the general theme of his intellectual and spiritual transformation, Brownson now believed that it was entirely na¨ıve for individuals or even whole communities to aspire to economic independence. What he wanted to emphasize instead, as a part of his new love affair with existing institutions and apparently even “the general laws of industry and business,” was the economic interdependence of individuals, communities, and even the nations of the world.49 Brownson now shared much common ground with Adam Smith and the clerical economists. He spoke, for example, of “the diversities of soil and productions of the different parts of the globe,” and of the imperative that those parts trade with one another. He also admonished local communities of their duty “to augment the general wealth of the Nation”; and he even used the pin-manufactory example to demonstrate the folly of attempted

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self-sufficiency. In the end, he wanted to remind his readers that they simply “must accept the business world as it finds it, and conform to it while seeking to derive greater advantage from it.”50 These are the words of a tired exrevolutionary turned resigned realist—a man who, having fought against the powerful institutions of his day in the name of justice and equality for all, now encouraged his peers to “accept . . . and conform to” those same institutions in the hope that they could provide for the order, peace, and prosperity of as many people as humanly possible. In some ways, therefore, like the clerical economists, Brownson had become a utilitarian. He no longer had any radical hope that much more could ever be achieved in this life than the greatest good for the greatest number, even in a civilized society. Brownson never became an outspoken champion of emerging capitalism (he never did entirely outgrow his paternalistic concern for the working class), but after the 1840s he also never again launched a systemic critique of it either. Time-honored institutions might be rife with systemic problems and inequalities, but they generally did more good than harm and were necessary for social stability. Because no individual, community, or nation was “sufficient” to produce all the necessities and comforts of civilized life, as Adam Smith had explained so clearly, they needed the division of labor, free trade, and the institutions of market capitalism to provide them with the materials that they lacked. Orestes Brownson took a long and circuitous route to reach this destination, but eventually he arrived; and as with his journey to the Roman Catholic Church, he felt that he had found a comfortable home there—one that he never left.

chapter eleven

Some Comparisons and Preliminary Conclusions

t h r o u g h o u t its history, the Christian religion has been the starting point for remarkably diverse—even contradictory—political, social, and economic ideologies. Conservatives, for example, can often find within Christianity the intellectual and theological resources they are looking for to make sense of, or even legitimize, the world in which they live or the one they are desperately trying to maintain. But it is equally true that Christianity has within it the intellectual and theological resources to effectively critique any given social, political, or economic order. Thus in church history, there have been both Constantines and St. Anthonys; worldly popes and humble Franciscans; corrupt church functionaries and passionate reformers; repressive and order-minded Puritans in places like Boston and other Puritans who dared to execute their king; slave owners who defended their “peculiar institution” by quoting the Bible and abolitionists who quoted the same Bible in the hope of seeing that institution destroyed. Similarly, in the antebellum North, there were some Protestants who saw in the development of market capitalism the hand of God, while others saw only the work of the devil. And as with their predecessors in the faith, both of these groups lived within a shared Christian setting but occupied decidedly different “characters” in the drama. Thus they drew on different ethical vocabularies as they constructed their competing arguments. In seeking to understand these ethical vocabularies, one could say that the most glaring contrast between the “assured” clerical economists and the “opposed” contrarians was in their attention to scale. While Orestes Brownson and Stephen Colwell were primarily concerned about individuals— 1 55

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especially working-class individuals—and to what extent the modernizing economy was harming them, the clerical economists were more interested in the national or international picture and how individuals were supposed to fit into it. They did care about individuals and individual morality— especially because of its political impact in the young American republic— but they were more concerned with building and maintaining the nation’s economic order, prosperity, and strength. National order and prosperity were some of the clerical economists’ main reasons for teaching political economy and encouraging economic modernization in the first place. As educators, they took seriously their responsibility to impart truth, aware of the fact that they were training the future leaders, policymakers, and voters of America. They were also deeply committed to the existing structures and systems in which they lived—both the intellectual systems of natural theology and Scottish common sense, as well as the political and economic structures of the new nation—and they wanted to defend them against all possible threats. Enlisting the young discipline of political economy as their ally, they soon discovered, turned out to be a strategic masterstroke that helped them win battles on both fronts simultaneously. On the one hand, a Christianized political economy helped keep the intellectual edifice of natural theology intact. For a little while longer, science and religion could be thought to reinforce one another instead of clash—at least until Charles Darwin. And on the other hand, the new discipline encouraged order and stability because it described how the country might amass wealth. The clerical economists gleaned from Adam Smith’s Inquiry scientific prescriptions for how the young republic must structure its economy if it was going to accomplish this end, and chief among those prescriptions was the division of labor and the increased inequality that would naturally accompany it. Occupying a different “character” on their antebellum stage, Brownson and Colwell had different priorities and a different ethical vocabulary. Whereas the clerical economists praised the division of labor as the bedrock on which national economic efficiency rested, these gadflies and self-styled reformers wanted to highlight the murderous effects of that division on the laborers themselves. They were not subversives, mounting a full-scale assault on the existing structures and institutions of their day, but neither were they willing to defend those institutions simply for the sake of order and stability alone. And from publications such as Colwell’s New Themes for the Protestant Clergy and Brownson’s “The Laboring Classes,” it should be evident that these men were willing to create controversy, regardless of

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the consequences that might befall an institution, political party, or even their own careers. In the true spirit of reform, they criticized Christendom (an institution) in the name of Christ, and America (another institution) in the name of democracy. Assailing the leaders of both church and state for having strayed from the principles of their respective founders did not win them many influential friends—it also might have cost the Democrats the White House in 1840—but this was never their goal. Animated by the humanitarianism that they claimed was the central principle of both authentic Christianity and real democracy, they sought to speak on behalf of an authority that transcended earthly power. Brownson and Colwell were therefore the idealists and the purists, while the clerical economists were the realists and the pragmatists, willing to compromise an intellectual position whenever any type of order and stability were at risk. The differences among the contrarians and the clerical economists manifested themselves in some important ways that the historical actors did not recognize but that are apparent in hindsight. The first of these was their understanding of history and how change over time related to human society and transcendent religious beliefs. Interestingly, it was the clerical economists who embraced a more historical understanding of religion and an ahistorical, or Enlightenment-influenced, view of human society. They were thrilled, for example, about the recent progress of the gospel in the Second Great Awakening, the spread of a religious civilization, and the development of religious institutions in America. They also, no doubt, believed in their specific traditions’ particular creeds, doctrines, and structures of authority as they had been handed down to them by their forebears. But when it came to human society—although they were aware that it too was subject to historical forces—the clerical economists tended to think in terms of fixed and immutable laws: laws of human nature, morality, social organization, and political economy. They, of course, did believe that human society changed over time, but to them it truly progressed only inasmuch as it conformed more and more to the laws that God had established for its good governance. That is why Francis Wayland could proclaim that the educator’s responsibility was “to render mind the fittest possible instrument for DISCOVERING, APPLYING, and OBEYING, the laws under which God has placed the universe.”1 Teaching those laws to his students was for their own good and the good of the country. Obeying them would always bring happiness both to the individual and to the nation. Wayland and the other clerical economists also presumably believed that human society could actually stop progressing once all the nations of the world had been enlightened

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to those laws of the Creator, especially the laws of political economy, and had structured their societies according to them. This was the final and commercial stage of human civilization, after which there presumably would be no further progress. Brownson and Colwell, on the other hand, held strongly to a historical and pessimistic view of human society and to a more ahistorical view of the Christian message. Both of them disliked and criticized what Christianity had become: institutionalized, self-interested, worldly wise, and spiritually dead. To them the true Christian faith was not about the creeds of the past or the denominational turf wars of their antebellum present, but about loving one’s neighbor as Christ had commanded and as Christ had illustrated in his own ministry. Neither of them could understand why this message would have to change over time. Loving one’s neighbor might take on different forms in different historical contexts, but it should never become secondary in importance to any Christian in any time or place. To them the laws of the Bible were immutable and ahistorical. Instead, it was human societies, and especially the forms of sin within those societies, that changed dramatically over time. Stephen Colwell, for example, claimed that he regarded “the faults of individuals, whether priests, clergy, ministers, or laymen, as being faults of their age or their station,” and that “men placed in similar circumstances will be likely to transgress in similar paths.”2 Colwell did not mean by this that “circumstances” excused people from their sinful actions, but instead that they can give rise to certain sinful behavior. Simply put, particular circumstances led to particular and predictable sins. Orestes Brownson said the same thing. “The cause of the inequality, we speak of,” he complained, “must be sought in history, and be regarded as having its root in Providence, or in human nature, only in that sense in which all historical facts have their origin in these.” And as Brownson wrote about the church: “We admit that we oppose the Church, as it now is.” “It is never religion itself that the reformer opposes,” he argued elsewhere, but the “foul and unnatural mixture presented him in the place of pure religion.” And this “foul and unnatural mixture,” he contended, was the result of history. “Pure religion,” on the other hand, the ahistorical gospel of authentic Christianity, “is emphatically the workingman’s religion,” and “Jesus was emphatically the teacher of the masses, the prophet of the people.” What Brownson meant by this is that the timeless truths of the New Testament should turn all devout Christians into advocates for the oppressed and the underprivileged. According to Brownson, the “Church, as it now is,” had lost its moorings and become instead the home of oppressors

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and the indifferent. To him, the poisonous alliance between the wealthy and the clergy had made all of American Christendom deaf to the cries of the people most in need of their assistance and their ministry.3 Unlike the clerical economists, neither of these contrarians believed in any ahistorical set of natural laws that supposedly governed the behavior of human beings in society, aside from the law of original sin. Instead they cared about the very historical and contingent “circumstances” of any given society that always powerfully shaped and molded the behavior and beliefs of its individual citizens. And they cared especially about the troubling circumstances in which they found themselves living—Max Weber’s “iron cage”—and they wanted to work to reform them. They believed that this reformation, however, would come only by returning to the Christianity of Christ. The forms of sin had changed with the times, and regrettably many Christians had made their peace with the world. But the timeless law of Christian love should never change. It was only by conforming society more and more to this immutable law, they predicted, rather than the spurious “laws” of political economy, that true social progress would occur. Unsurprisingly, the contrarians and the clerical economists also differed in their use of religious language to describe the relationship between the worldly economic activity of human beings and the divine purposes of God. Since this was a theological matter, perhaps their differences can best be described as Trinitarian. The clerical economists spoke almost exclusively about God the Father, and especially God the Lawgiver and Creator of the universe; while the contrarians spoke mostly about Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity. For Brownson and Colwell, the God of the economy was Jesus of the New Testament, who instead of dealing with nations and the cosmos through established and inviolable laws, addressed his admonitions about economic morality to individuals and the church. Interested as they were in individuals and in how individuals were supposed to treat one another in their varying social situations, Brownson and Colwell naturally chose to focus on the words and actions of Jesus, the God-man who walked among and interacted with human beings in a social situation of his own. Seeking insight into how they should treat their neighbor in their own particular historical moment, which they recognized was quite different from that of first-century Palestine, they nevertheless wanted to glean as much information as they could from the teachings of Jesus and the example of the early church. They did use the word God, but the words Jesus, Christ, Our Saviour, the Redeemer, and other synonyms occur with much greater frequency in their writings.4

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Also, whenever they spoke about God, the first Person of the Trinity, they were usually speaking about God as either benevolent Father, or God as Judge and Punisher of oppressors, hypocrites, and the unjust.5 The clerical economists, on the other hand, almost never mentioned Jesus and almost never quoted scripture. Although they regularly used religious language, they tended to speak about “God,” “the Creator” of the universe and “the Author” of the laws by which that universe was governed. For Francis Wayland, for example, God was “the Creator [who] has subjected the accumulation of the blessings of this life to some determinate laws; . . . [who] has designed men to labor” and who has “given to all men faculties for labor.”6 For John McVickar and Henry Vethake, the divine was even more distant. Instead of the words Jesus or even God or Creator, they spoke only about “the spirit of Christianity,” “that wise and good Providence,” and “Truth, genuine truth.”7 All of these men still succeeded at reconciling political economy with their faith, but their Christian version of the science was curiously lacking in overt references to Christ. This focus on language leads to a final comparison between these different Christian thinkers. Using the most basic of ethical categories, it is instructive to think of the contrarians as representing the tradition of deontological (duty-based) ethics, and the clerical economists as representing the utilitarian (consequentialist) tradition. These ethical schools of thought had existed for millennia, and it is possible to think of these two antebellum groups as occupying a place in that long moral conversation. Alasdair MacIntyre, again, describes social “characters” as “the masks worn by moral philosophies.”8 In the antebellum North, the “character” of the order-minded republican educator was the mask for Christian utilitarianism, while the outspoken and justice-minded contrarian was the mask of a Christian deontology. As a result of these incommensurable moral vocabularies, the contrarians and the clerical economists talked past one another. Both “characters” were thoroughly Christian (as well as thoroughly American for that matter), but given their differing priorities, it was impossible to find ethical common ground, even given their common faith. The contrarians cared about the poor and the outcast because they claimed that Jesus cared about the poor and the outcast. The clerical economists, on the other hand, in addition to wanting to keep God relevant in an increasingly “disenchanted” world, also wanted the greatest material good for the greatest number in the new American republic—a rather humanitarian goal but one also predicated on a utilitarian calculation. Establishing the nation’s economy on the firm foundation of the truths of Adam Smith’s new science (the division of labor and free

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trade) was an important means of achieving the greatest good for the greatest number, even if it was materialist in nature and even if it meant harming some in the process. In the early nineteenth century, utilitarianism came into its own and was met with tremendous scorn from both religious believers and those committed to alternative ethical systems. Although praiseworthy for its uncompromising egalitarianism, especially in a democratic context like America, utilitarianism both seemed and truly was materialistic, with little place for matters of transcendence or the spirit. Also, because of its preoccupation with ends or consequences, utilitarianism could apparently sanction means that were highly problematic to traditional moralists. In other words, a utilitarian might seek to justify some clearly unethical activity because it led to the greatest good for the greatest number—killing a few people, to use a dramatic example, to save even more lives. Many Christians would obviously have problems with this system, and in antebellum America most Christians did, including the clerical economists. The problem for historians however, as pointed out most clearly by Daniel Rodgers, is that so many antebellum Americans, including the clerical economists, were utilitarians. “A practical, often crassly materialist people,” Rodgers writes, “hell-bent on results, who learned to calculate and commodify across vast stretches of American life—all this, let there be no doubt, the Americans were.” “And yet,” he adds, “when Jeremy Bentham offered his work to the Americans, proclaiming himself an American in spirit, they rejected it virtually out of hand. . . . A culture capable of spawning a Benjamin Franklin simply may have had no need to take on a Bentham and all the more reason, accordingly, to recoil from his quirky vocabulary and (as the reviewers correctly suspected) his religious heterodoxy.”9 In other words, antebellum Americans hated Bentham’s materialism and atheism, but whenever they thought about the ethical organization of their young American society and economy, they almost invariably adopted Benthamite presuppositions. His hedonic or felicific calculus and overall worldliness shocked many antebellum believers, including those exposed to the new academic discipline of political economy. But the clerical economists, the men responsible for making that discipline bearable for those same American Christians, shared in precisely those Benthamite priorities and prescriptions. Their answer to the objection about political economy’s worldliness, for example, was that a good God intended not just eternal but earthly happiness for all human creation. Thus God himself adhered to a felicific calculus of his own. According to the dictates of natural theology, a good God could do nothing

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less. And as for the questions about political economy’s morality, they responded that the discipline always had in mind the greatest good for the greatest number, even if it meant some questionable activity along the way. The contrarians could not have been further from this “ends justify the means” mentality. Eschewing utilitarianism entirely, the contrarians adopted and operated under a Christian deontology that bordered on moral absolutism or perhaps divine command theory. According to this set of ethical principles, the end never justified the means if the means violated clear moral standards. Actions are simply right or wrong in and of themselves. Killing, for example, was always wrong, even if it saved more lives. Lying was also wrong regardless of the good consequences that the lie might effect. The traditional problem for deontological (or duty-driven) ethics, however, is in explaining why certain actions are deemed immoral in and of themselves. What is it about them that makes them categorically forbidden? This is where deontology can overlap with divine command ethics and rely on traditional sources of authority such as the Bible. Actions such as killing, lying, stealing, or adultery are forbidden because God says that they are. As for the specific issue of Christian ethics and capitalist economics, the contrarians were as clear as possible in their thinking. “No man can serve both God and Mammon,” Orestes Brownson argued, obviously quoting the words of Jesus from Matthew 6:24.10 And Stephen Colwell packed his writings with verses from the New Testament. Jesus loved the poor, Colwell argued, lived among them, and once instructed a would-be follower to sell his possessions and minister to them, warning that it was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”11 Thus Colwell concluded that “if these commands are as broad and obligatory as their terms imply, they constitute the basis of the Christian system, and of all true social economy.”12 How could any devout Christian possibly refute or rationalize away such clear admonitions from the very mouth of Jesus? And from this deontological or divine-command foundation, Brownson and Colwell would not be moved. As Colwell summed it up: “Our only safe guide is the word of God in our own hands.”13 The question of whether Adam Smith’s political economy could help prop up natural theology did not matter to them at all. Nor did they care about the greatest material good for the greatest number. What mattered exclusively was what God had decreed and in particular what God had decreed about how individuals were supposed to treat other individuals, especially the poor and the powerless. The difference between the contrarians’ deontology and the clerical economists’ utilitarianism returns us once again to the issue of scale. With the

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exception of verses like “render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,”14 almost all of Jesus’ admonitions and instructions about how to steward worldly wealth deal with relationships between individuals. In other words, there is very little said about the relationship of the individual to larger structures such as a government or to all-encompassing economic systems such as market capitalism. For the contrarians therefore, since the New Testament was concerned primarily with individuals, they too were concerned with individuals. Or, perhaps since they were concerned with individuals, they could turn to the Bible more easily than the clerical economists for their authority and their proof texts. During the course of the antebellum era, only one figure investigated here, Orestes Brownson, switched from one “character” to another. As a part of this transformation, Brownson went from believing a hyper-individualistic religious creed and political and economic ethic, to articulating a philosophy in which the individual was almost entirely lost in the powerful and wise institutions of the Catholic Church, constitutional democracy, and market capitalism. When it came to economics in particular, Brownson traded in his deontological moral philosophy and became, basically, a utilitarian. After 1844 he cared about the greatest material good for the greatest number, and he surprisingly saw freedom-restricting institutions as the best means to that end. Furthermore, since the autonomy of the individual (whether in religious, political, or economic life) was no longer his highest priority, neither was the Bible his proof text. He never lost his Christian faith, but his religious language and priorities did change dramatically. Instead of an ahistorical “Christianity of Christ,” where “Jesus was a social reformer,”15 Brownson instead spoke of the Catholic Church as the “divinely founded institution” through which there was the only hope for earthly reform and eternal salvation. “If you reject the Church,” he added, “you are slaves, without the possibility of becoming free.” And he lambasted the duplicitous “LIBERAL, PHILANTHROPIST, and REFORMER” for seducing people with utopian dreams of a future society in which every individual would be fulfilled.16 Brownson too had made his sad peace with the world and in particular with its institutions, and in doing so he had switched “characters.” He had gone from radical to reactionary; from advocating dramatic change to encouraging stability and continuity; from prioritizing individuals to prioritizing institutions; and from a rigid deontological ethical system to a more flexible utilitarian consequentialism. Brownson’s conversion, however, is not the end of this story. The initial question of this investigation was: what did Christians in the antebellum

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North think about market capitalism when it was first something to be thought about? Were they generally enthusiastic about it, as the clerical economists were, or were they primarily hostile to it, as were Stephen Colwell and the young Orestes Brownson? But in addition to this somewhat easy classification of either pro or con, there needs to be added a third category that encompasses those who lived somewhere in the messy middle, between the two extremes. These people generally accepted the advent of the capitalist market as a positive development but sought to temper its excesses by emphasizing the need for virtuous behavior by individual Christians within the economic mechanism. This is what separates them from the other two groups investigated thus far. Both the clerical economists and the contrarians were concerned primarily with the benefits and burdens of the developing market-capitalist mechanism. Thus they naturally thought big—about the regional, national, and international system that was beginning to emerge. This is why they either lapsed into utilitarianism, or, with equal ease, critiqued utilitarian assumptions with a biblical deontology. Stephen Colwell, for example, disdained outright the nervous conservatives who regularly fall “with savage severity upon him who offers to disturb a single brick in the grand structure of that society which constitutes this present world.” Colwell himself wanted to disturb that supposedly “grand structure,” or at least ask some hard questions about it. In his opinion, it was a morally flawed economic order that “stimulates all to run, but permits the heat of competition to rise so high that none can stoop to pick up the multitudes who fall exhausted by the way.”17 In other words, there was a price to pay for economic progress, and it was the weak and those who could not compete (and precisely those, Colwell would add, whom Jesus loved) who bear the brunt of it. This utilitarian sacrificing of the few for the many, in his opinion, was the scourge of the modern economic system and the unforgivable oversight of all its champions, especially if they called themselves Christians. Organizing these thinkers and their ideas, even complicated ideas, into these two categories is both convenient and accurate, but ultimately incomplete when it comes to the full range of Christian attitudes about the antebellum development of market capitalism. Binary organization—just like dualistic thinking—is always simpler. Either people were for something or they were against it. Either that something (in this case, market capitalism) was good, or it was bad. But this is not the complete picture. There were many people in antebellum America who simply cannot be crammed into either category and whose thoughts form another discrete set of opinions

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about the interrelationship of Christian faith and capitalist economics. They cared about some of the same questions but ultimately gave them a different spin, both in their asking and in their answering. Like both the clerical economists and the contrarians, they were concerned with the place of Christian ethics within the developing mechanism of market capitalism, but they played a different “character” in the antebellum North and consequently were the “masks” of a different moral philosophy.

part iv “Adapted”—The Pastoral Moralists

t h i s part is by far the most complicated of the book, largely because it deals more with selves than with systems. Instead of investigating those who ethically evaluated market capitalism for its effects on whole populations or classes, this section investigates those who addressed the questions of what a person is and what is right moral action for that person within the “iron cage” of a market-capitalist structure. Since that structure was relatively new, so were many of the ethical questions that accompanied it. A recent “revolution,” as Henry Boardman put it, had “taken the SPIRIT OF TRADE out of the mire, and enthroned it over crowns and scepters.” And as Orville Dewey wrote: “It will be admitted, that modern business—modern, I mean, as compared with that of a hundred or even fifty years ago—has assumed a new character.” The “case with us, now,” Dewey continued, “is different. . . . The pursuit of property, and that in no moderate amount, has acquired at once an unprecedented activity and universality.”1 The passions of greed and materialism were the same as always. What was different and new in antebellum America was the increased opportunity people had in a market-capitalist economy to act on those passions. The pastoral moralists therefore realized that they were living in a new era of both unprecedented economic opportunities and equally unprecedented moral perils. Commenting on the benefits and burdens of this new age, however, was not a full-time occupation for any of the pastoral moralists. Unlike either the clerical economists or the contrarians, all of whom thought a great deal about economic matters over the course of several years, the pastoral moralists wrote only occasionally on this subject, and usually only 1 67

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once in their lives. In other words, they did not develop anything like a repertoire or show a development of thought over time because there was no discernable development. Calling these men “pastoral moralists” is therefore merely a shorthand way of categorizing this disparate group of antebellum Northerners who addressed a common set of questions. They had no real corporate identity as such. Still, in spite of the fact that these authors wrote only once on these issues and often decades apart from one another, the literature does form a remarkably coherent whole. They shared a way of approaching the subject, identifying key issues, and making their tentative recommendations. Apparently, Applying the Word of God to the Traffic of Men2 led the pastoral moralists to an implicit consensus about the Christian rules of commercial activity—rules that they then wanted to pass on to their readers, parishioners, or students. In general, the pastoral moralists approved of the development of market capitalism but wanted to live as Christians within its confines. This is why it is appropriate to call them “adapted” and, surprisingly perhaps, the adapting went in both directions. In fact, it is fair to say that while they modified certain aspects of their Christian faith as they applied it to the modernizing American economy in which they were living; they also sought to conform that economy to the uncompromised ethical standards of their Christian faith. This is how the pastoral moralists distinguished themselves from both the clerical economists and the contrarians. While the pastoral moralists agreed with the clerical economists about the overall utilitarian goodness of the market-capitalist system, they also thought that that system could either strengthen or decidedly ruin the virtue of the individual economic actor. As ministers in the antebellum North, the pastoral moralists were primarily concerned with the individual’s virtue and how it might be maintained and even fortified in the rough-and-tumble world of commercial affairs—a subject that the clerical economists always avoided. More like the contrarians, the pastoral moralists turned to the Bible as the foundation for their ethics; but distinct from them as well, the pastoral moralists did not condemn nearly as much economic activity as leading to the oppression of the poor. Instead, the pastoral moralists focused on the virtues of their faith—and in particular the life lived in accordance with the golden rule—and not the radical and uncompromising passages about God and mammon or the rich man in hell. This latter perspective is that of a Christian deontology or divine command theory. The perspective of the pastoral moralists, on the other hand, which was considered riskier because it could lead to compromise with worldly

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mammon, sought to instruct Christians in how to engage with the world of commercial affairs, but remain distinct and untainted from it. The tradition of virtue ethics is distinguished from deontology and utilitarianism in that it is neither concerned with rules nor consequences, but instead prioritizes the inner traits or dispositions that lead individuals to right moral actions in specific situations. As we will see, this is consistent with the outlook and objectives of the pastoral moralists, who focused on the general principle of the golden rule (“whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them”),3 but left the difficult and specific applications of that general principle up to individuals in their particular circumstances.

chapter twelve

Paradox, People, and Project

“ w e a r e , if I may say so, in an unfortunate dilemma,” Orville Dewey lamented: “Our political civilization has opened the way for multitudes to wealth, and created an insatiable desire for it.”4 This was the central moral paradox that accompanied the advent of a market-capitalist economy, and there were serious consequences if this paradox could not be adequately resolved. A whole nation of mammon-worshippers would spell disaster for a republic. Individual transgressions might be private or seemingly extend only as far as one’s social micro-world, but as all good republicans believed, these private decisions would eventually manifest themselves disastrously in the public realm. If the collective virtue of the young republic were to be corrupted by the private economic vices of its citizens, the whole national edifice would come apart. “Among the elements of the nation’s greatness,” William Arnot warned, “lie the seeds of its sure decay. The very abundance of our material resources, and the very excess of our mercantile enterprise, seem to be forcing into earlier maturity the vices that will lay our glory in the dust.”5 Accompanying the development of market capitalism were the obvious vices of competitiveness and pride, and the traditional republican bugbears of luxury and greed. These social pathogens threatened first the virtue of individual Christians within the market mechanism, and by extension the stability of the republic itself. Some believers therefore reasoned that the “principles of trade are immoral and unchristian,” and that “no prosperous merchant can be a good Christian.”6 In this Manichean view of things, the structure of the modernizing economy was so rotten and its temptations so 1 71

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irresistible that it simply could not be reconciled with Christian principles and practices. The business climate was such that one had to choose between either worldly success via immoral business activity, or a virtuous and principled business that would inevitably fail. Given “the present state of things,” Henry Boardman wrote, some thought that it was simply impossible “to do a mercantile business successfully, on Christian principles.”7 There was apparently no way to be both moral and successful, and given the choice, some Christians were conceivably prepared to forsake business altogether. As Orville Dewey described their conclusion: “better that commerce should perish than Christianity.”8 Better, they thought, not to gain the world but lose their souls in the process. But as the pastoral moralists went on to argue, this was a misperception, a reactionary response to the strange, new economic environment that apparently frightened some believers. What they wanted to do, therefore, was find the middle ground between these two extremes—not categorically condemning all commercial involvement as sinful, but also recognizing that activity within the developing structures of market capitalism was subject to moral boundaries. All of the pastoral moralists were ministers first and foremost, concerned with the lives of their congregations, oftentimes a single congregation for decades on end. This was their “character,” and although they came from remarkably different theological perspectives, they all shared this antebellum “character’s” outlook on life and the moral vocabulary that went along with it. Orville Dewey (1794–1882), for example, who is quoted above, was one of the foremost Unitarians of his day. Originally from Sheffield, Massachusetts, Dewey was graduated as the class valedictorian from Williams College in 1814, and later attended Andover Theological Seminary, where he began to question the orthodoxy of his youth. While serving a Congregational Church in Gloucester, he became a Unitarian, and from 1821 to 1823 worked under Dr. William Ellery Channing at the Federal Street Church in Boston. For the next sixty years of his life, Dewey devoted himself to the pastoral ministry and to his denomination, leading churches in Massachusetts and New York, and serving as the president of the American Unitarian Association from 1845 to 1847. Dewey also wrote and lectured extensively on a wide range of subjects, from defenses of Unitarianism, to travel literature, to pressing social issues. For our purposes here, Dewey’s most relevant work is his Moral Views of Commerce, Society, and Politics, in Twelve Discourses, which he published in 1838.9 Orville Dewey was not the only Unitarian among the pastoral moralists. Jason Whitman (1799–1848) was graduated from Harvard in 1825, served

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as the general secretary of the American Unitarian Association in 1834, and later led churches in both Massachusetts and Maine. Much better known was Andrew Preston Peabody (1811–1893). Fitting the Unitarian stereotype almost perfectly, Peabody was born and raised in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College at the age of fifteen, attended Harvard Divinity School, and at the age of twenty-two took his first pastorate at the influential South Parish Unitarian Church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a position he held for the next twenty-seven years. In 1860 he returned to Harvard as the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and in 1862 and 1868–69 served as president of the college. During his lifetime he contributed regularly to the Whig Review, and in 1853 he replaced Francis Bowen, the clerical economist and his “Old Roman” Harvard colleague, as the editor of the North American Review, a position he held until 1863. During that decade as editor, he is reported to have written over 1,600 pages himself, while over the course of his lifetime he published over 190 titles.10 The only relevant sources that either Peabody or Whitman published on economics and ethics, however, are sermons they delivered at the beginning of the Panic of 1837. Peabody’s sermon, entitled Views of Duty Adapted to the Times, is not the jeremiad that one might expect. Rather than tell his audience that they were currently reaping what they had sown, Peabody sought to restore people’s faith in both the country’s financial institutions and its managers. “I would have you confide in the productive industry of a free and energetic people,” he enjoined. “Let us trust, and forbear. . . . The mercantile profession deserves well of humanity.”11 By contrast, Whitman’s sermon, The Hard Times, is more typical jeremiad material, especially in its indictment of “the spirit of speculation” and “the restless haste to be rich.” But it is still decidedly Unitarian in its genteel encouragement to “christian [sic] calmness and composure of mind,”12 instead of a harsh admonition to personal confession and repentance. The other pastoral moralists came from decidedly non-Unitarian theological backgrounds. Henry Augustus Boardman (1808–1880), for example, was a staunch Calvinist and leading Old School Presbyterian. Originally from Troy, New York, Boardman was graduated from Yale College in 1829 and Princeton Theological Seminary in 1830. In 1833 he took the pastorate of the famous Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and remained there until his death in 1880, forty-six years later. In that long career, he published only two works that pertain to economic issues: one a sermon entitled Piety Essential to Man’s Temporal Prosperity (1834) and the other a more extended treatment entitled The Bible in the Counting House: A Course of Lectures to Merchants

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(1853). In both of these sources, as we will see, Boardman addressed the heart of das Adam Smith Problem: how to reconcile economic self-interest, which he did not condemn, with a sympathetic concern for the welfare of others. Another Calvinist, although not a Presbyterian, was Joseph Emerson (1777–1833). Like Andrew Peabody, Emerson also attended Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, but he finished his studies before the Unitarian controversy began in 1805. He took his first pastoral position in 1801 and in 1803 became the minister of the Congregational Church of Beverly, Massachusetts. He resigned in 1816 and for the rest of his life devoted himself to education, especially women’s education. In 1816 he founded a seminary for women and wrote extensively on the subject of education. As a pastoral moralist, his most relevant work was an 1813 sermon on Christian Economy in which he attempted to answer several questions about the believer’s right relationship to property: whether it should be pursued in the first place, how it should be pursued, and what to do when one’s pursuit of property conflicted with the interests of one’s neighbor. In this last question, Emerson, like Henry Boardman, also addressed das Adam Smith Problem. In his original question, however, he touched on the difficulty of reconciling eternal rewards with worldly needs. “Tho [sic] the great object of Christ’s coming into the world was of a spiritual nature,” he began, “yet he was not wholly unmindful of temporal things.” The remainder of the sermon is a systematic and thorough treatment of this problem.13 Joshua Bates (1776–1854), another Congregational minister and the president of Middlebury College, also addressed the subject of Christianity and property. Beginning by unabashedly showing his indebtedness to John Locke, Bates wrote that “men, as social beings, possess certain personal rights, of which no earthly power can justly deprive them. . . . Among the rights of man, in society, is that of property.”14 Like most of the pastoral moralists though, Bates preached on this subject only once in his career. Most of his writings instead deal with education and the importance of Christian character. Born and raised on a farm in Cohasset, Massachusetts, Bates later attended Harvard and was graduated in 1800, just a year before Joseph Emerson. In 1803 he was ordained and took the pastorate of a church in Dedham, Massachusetts, and in 1818 he began his term as president of Middlebury College, a position he held until 1839. David McConaughy (1775–1852) was another well-known minister and educator. Born in Menallen, Pennsylvania, McConaughy was graduated from Dickinson College in 1795 and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in 1797. From 1800 to 1832 he led a church at Upper Marsh Creek and was

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also active in social reform, focusing most of his attention on the causes of education and temperance. In 1832 he was elected president of Washington College, where he served until 1849. In 1817, at the very beginning of the market revolution, he preached a sermon entitled The Duties and Dangers of Prosperity, in which he admonished his listeners to remember that God is the giver of all good things, and they are but “stewards of the divine bounty.”15 Twenty years later, and under very different economic circumstances, Leonard Bacon (1802–1881) preached a similar sermon. At the outset of the Panic of 1837, Bacon was unsparing in his criticism of “the pride of wealth, and the fever of acquisition” that were, in his opinion, “the moral causes of the present affliction.”16 Usually moderate in both tone and content, Bacon here excoriated American Christians for “making riches the only object of competition or desire.” “To acquire riches,” he added, “seems to thousands upon thousands the chief end of man.”17 Bacon possibly had personal reasons for being so passionate about the misuse of money. The son of a failed Congregational missionary, the Reverend David Bacon, Leonard was born on the western frontier, in Detroit, Michigan, and moved often as his father fruitlessly sought to establish a church. By 1812, when Leonard was ten, his father had exhausted both his funds and his creditors’ patience, and returned defeated to his original home in Connecticut. There, Leonard’s uncle became his benefactor, providing for both his financial and educational needs. In 1820 Bacon was graduated from Yale, and in 1824, at the age of twenty-three, he accepted a call from the prominent First Church of New Haven, a position he held for the next forty-one years. From this pulpit and through his many published works, Bacon established himself as one of the leading New England clergymen of his day.18 Equally prominent was Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright (1792–1854), Episcopal priest and later bishop of New York. Born in Liverpool, England, Wainwright was the son of Peter Wainwright, an English merchant, and Elizabeth Mayhew, the daughter of Jonathan Mayhew (1720–1766), the Boston Congregational clergyman and revolutionary patriot made famous in the last years of his life for his outspoken criticism of exploitative British taxation. Wainwright followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and became a clergyman, but in a rather different tradition. After graduating from Harvard in 1812, Wainwright was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 1817, and for the next thirty-five years served churches in both Boston and New York. In 1852, only two years before his death, he was consecrated as the provisional bishop of New York. Wainwright was also a promoter of higher education throughout his life, serving as a trustee of Columbia College and

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the General Theological Seminary in New York, as well as helping found what would become New York University. Typical of his contemporaries, his intellectual output was vast, although he published only one sermon on economic matters. In 1835 he delivered a sermon entitled Inequality of Individual Wealth the Ordinance of Providence, and Essential to Civilization, a perspective on God and mammon that would have been pure anathema to Stephen Colwell and Orestes Brownson.19 These nine men are the most important of the northern pastoral moralists. There are, however, two British divines whose works on religious and economic themes receive attention here because they were later reprinted in America. The first is a sermon by Walter Blake Kirwan on Seeking Another’s Wealth, and the second, William Arnot’s more extensive treatment, The Race for Riches, and Some of the Pits into Which the Runners Fall: Six Lectures Applying the Word of God to the Traffic of Men. Kirwan’s sermon is especially relevant as yet another example of a Christian appropriation of John Locke. It also bears remarkable similarities to both Joseph Emerson’s and Joshua Bates’s treatment of the subject. Born in County Galway, Ireland, Walter Blake Kirwan (1754–1805) was one of the eighteenth century’s most famous converts from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism. A Franciscan and professor of natural and moral philosophy at the time of his ordination to the priesthood in the mid-1770s, Kirwan experienced a crisis in his faith in the mid-1780s and left the Catholic Church in 1787. He was then ordained in the Church of Ireland and served as rector of St. Nicholas-Without in Dublin for the rest of his life. Kirwan originally delivered his sermon on Seeking Another’s Wealth sometime in the late 1780s as one of his famous charity sermons. It was then republished in America in 1856 in the History and Repository of Pulpit Eloquence.20 William Arnot’s Race for Riches was originally published in 1851, but was reprinted in America just two years later and with an extensive introduction by Stephen Colwell, who obviously endorsed the book’s content. Arnot (1808–1875) was a lifelong citizen of Glasgow and one of the founders of the Free Church of Scotland in 1843. As a Scot, Arnot had likewise seen the results of economic modernization, and as a pastor in an industrial city had pioneered philanthropic efforts at poor relief. But even though Colwell was attracted to his ideas, Arnot is more of a pastoral moralist than a contrarian. Arnot did not attack market capitalism outright as Colwell did, but instead sought ways to live as a Christian within its developing structures—the common project of the pastoral moralists. Akin to the clerical economists, though, the pastoral moralists championed commerce itself, and the modernizing market-capitalist economy,

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in spite of its dangers. “It is the earnings of commerce,” Andrew Peabody argued, “that have erected our academies, our colleges, our seminaries of sacred learning,” and the other fruit of a civilized world.21 In fact, hoping for the demise of commerce was preposterous, Orville Dewey argued, and itself un-Christian. “Nothing can be more evident,” he wrote, “than that the earth was formed to be the theater of trade,” and trade, he explained, “is the inevitable result of the human condition.” To be human, in other words, to be God’s special creatures, was to create and consume value; or, in the words of Adam Smith, whom Dewey quoted, to “truck, barter and exchange.”22 According to the pastoral moralists, God had made the world for this very purpose. Sounding very much like the clerical economists when they spoke about the grand scheme of things, the pastoral moralists believed that the earth itself was the providentially ordained source of raw materials, carefully crafted by God for “the welfare of the living,”23 while commerce was the means through which God’s creatures stewarded the earth’s resources both for their own needs and for the needs of others. All of the pastoral moralists assumed that commercial civilization was an objective worth pursuing and that their readers would agree. They were therefore never defensive in any of their writings about valuing civilization and having contempt for savagery—another prejudice they shared with the clerical economists. They simply asserted the benefits of civilization and the necessity of progress toward it via economic development. As Orville Dewey confessed: “In saying that a great change is passing over the business character of the world, and that it is in some respects dangerous, I do not intend to say that it is altogether bad, or even that there is necessarily more evil than good in it.”24 This was Dewey’s balanced but mixed assessment of the developing economic shape of things. There were definite risks involved, with new and direct threats to a person’s virtue, but on the whole the change was a positive one because it advanced civilization. Jonathan Wainwright stated this argument in the extreme. In a sermon tellingly entitled Inequality of Individual Wealth the Ordinance of Providence, and Essential to Civilization, he compared directly the benefits of the developing economy against its drawbacks and knew which argument he found more compelling. “The universal impulse is forward,” he argued, “and if it produces some evils in exciting ambition, envyings, jealousies, dishonesty and strife, it calls into existence a thousandfold more blessings in the bright and varied intelligences, the hardy and ennobling virtues, the dauntless and persevering energies of our nature.”25 Wainwright attempted to present both sides in the debate over economic modernization, but like Orville Dewey he

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unequivocally deemed it a positive development, even in the categories of virtue ethics. On one side of the balance sheet were many traditional vices, such as ambition and envy. But on the other side were the “thousandfold more blessings” of “progress,” increased knowledge and energy, and even some virtues, presumably those of industry, sobriety, and thrift. Plus, if one were not convinced by a careful consideration of the new economy’s pros and cons, there were always the harder facts of the matter. No civilized person, “even in very moderate circumstances, would choose to relinquish the comforts and conveniences he now possesses,” Wainwright asserted. We “have acquired the knowledge and tasted the comforts of civilized life,” he added. “Are we willing to give them up?” Were the critics of commercial civilization, in other words, truly prepared to live an uncivilized life? Think of the Indians, Wainwright enjoined his listeners, they lived uncertain, wandering lives and were subject to famines and rampant disease, and their cultures had never made a lasting contribution to the sciences or the arts. In truth, the pastoral moralists concluded that such societies were backwards and thoroughly unenviable. And finally, if the grumblers actually wanted to replace the current American civilization with a less developed one, it would require a revolution to effect. This was perhaps the hardest truth of all and many pastoral moralists’ most pragmatic defense of the status quo. Why entertain false and misleading dreams about a simpler kind of life? A mature civilization “actually exists, and can only be removed by violence,” Wainwright concluded. It was, in other words, simply too late to return to such a primitive social existence without causing great social unrest.26 In sum, the pastoral moralists were resigned to the fact that American society was going in a certain direction and that life within that society had to be lived in a certain way. As Henry Boardman explained it: an economic “revolution” had “come over the world within the last half-century. . . . Whether this revolution could have been prevented, or whether it is not on the whole beneficial, is not a question now before us.”27 In other words, it was simply useless to criticize the system itself or long for a different or now-past social order. As the pastoral moralists acknowledged, there were some costs associated with the market revolution, but the current structure of American civilization was generally good and not going away. “Trade,” as Orville Dewey put it, “being a part of the inevitable lot of cultivated humanity, the question is, not about abolishing, but about the moral principles that are to regulate it.”28 Or as Boardman concluded, commerce, far from being an evil, was in fact “founded on the organic structure of the globe and mercifully designed by the Author of our being, to subserve the most salutary ends in our physical and moral training.”29

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This statement by Henry Boardman illustrates perfectly both the similarities and differences that existed between the pastoral moralists and the clerical economists. Both groups of thinkers agreed that, in general, commerce and commercial activity were God-ordained and good for meeting humankind’s physical needs. But for the clerical economists, this hedonistic lowest common denominator is as far as they went, largely because that was as far as Adam Smith went. As intellectual historian Lisa Hill describes it, Smith believed that the global commercial order kept “a hedonistic goal in view: our happiness, prosperity, perpetuation and material comfort. . . . The telos of human activity is not, as might be expected, the attainment of moral perfection.”30 For the clerical economists, such a view of the economic mechanism was consistent with an understanding of a good and caring God, and thus evidence against the Malthusian pessimists and skeptics. But as Hill makes clear, Smith’s economic mechanism, which provided exceptionally well for people’s material needs, seemed to be entirely unconcerned with their ethical development. The clerical economists therefore merely followed Smith’s lead and likewise emphasized the human “happiness” and “prosperity” that the progress of commercial development would effect, while ignoring entirely the goal of “moral perfection.” The pastoral moralists, on the other hand, thought of the grand mechanism of commerce as meeting, in Boardman’s words, “the most salutary ends in our physical and moral training.”31 As Orville Dewey expressed the idea: “Business, in its ultimate, its providential design is a school. . . . Man is placed in this school, as the learner of lessons for eternity.” And as Henry Boardman put it another way: business was “an essential part of that great scheme of Providence by which men are to be trained to the practice of virtue.”32 This was the pastoral moralists’ point of departure from the clerical economists. To them, instead of being evidence of God’s goodness, the mechanism of market capitalism was instead the divinely ordained training ground for virtuous souls. The problem was that people could fail in this school of character and go just as far away from true virtue as they could go toward it. And as the quotations at the beginning of this chapter indicate, this was exactly what the pastoral moralists feared was happening. For the most part, whenever they were moved to write or preach on this subject, the pastoral moralists were alarmed that believers had forgotten the moral end of business—the development of virtue—and had begun to think of commercial activity as a means of amassing a personal fortune only. As William Arnot complained: “The love of money has now taken the place of a God-fearing, man-loving sense of duty as the motive power in this man’s soul.” And as Orville Dewey summed it up: “that very [economic] structure, built for the gain

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of earth, may be the gate of hell!” God’s commercial mechanism (“that very structure”) was generally good. But fallen individuals, as always, were abusing the new opportunities that the structure afforded them and were placing themselves, their families, their neighbors, and their nation in grave danger as a result.33 The pastoral moralists realized that, as individuals, very few antebellum Americans were personally responsible for the existence of this new structure in which they found themselves living. But on the other hand, they wanted to remind their fellow believers that they were not allowed to use the complexity that the economy had brought into their lives as an excuse for immoral behavior. William Arnot made this point and this distinction perfectly clear. It “is not the part of a Christian man to comfort himself with the thought—It is not my fault,” he wrote. “And you are not relieved by showing, as you can easily do, that the evil belongs to the system which has become prevalent—that all fall in with the current—and that the efforts of one contending against it would not be sensibly felt.”34 Individual Christians, in other words, were still morally responsible creatures even if they were living amid powerful social forces that were beyond their control. The well-known duties and obligations of the Christian life—loving one’s neighbor as oneself, for example—remained the same. What following those commandments in the new economy was supposed to look like was the question all the pastoral moralists sought to answer. This, in short, was the pastoral moralists’ project: discerning how the individual could both succeed financially within the developing structures of market capitalism and follow without compromise the commands of Christ. As the next chapter will indicate, however, while the pastoral moralists were bold to ask this question, they were not altogether clear in their answers. Their collective response was impressively unanimous, but also frustratingly imprecise.

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Boundaries, Balance, and Faculty Psychology

a f t e r having begun their works with the tacit promise of an ambitious and probing exploration of business ethics, the pastoral moralists were always quick to establish boundaries that would limit the scope of their investigations. Lowering the expectations of their readers or listeners, they acknowledged that it was one thing to identify the general principles of ethical behavior in trade, but another to apply them to the specific ethical challenges of commercial life. As the pastoral moralists all confessed, it was difficult to come to the point of moral certainty about even the most basic of commercial transactions. Take, for example, the following scenario: You offer to sell to your neighbor an article of merchandise. . . . Conscience will hardly mark down the just price in your account book. Conscience, indeed, commands us to do right; but the question is, what is right?1

This question—“what is right?”—applied to “the thousand-fold processes of daily business,” such as setting a profitable but fair price, dogged the pastoral moralists on every page of their work. What was an appropriate understanding of competition, for example, the just price, self-interest, or usury?2 The modernizing economy was creating a new set of human relationships and a complex set of moral questions about those relationships. How was one supposed to love one’s neighbor in this new economy? Who, after all, was one’s neighbor? And what about a competitor? Could one really love a competitor as oneself while at the same time trying to drive him out of business? 1 81

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Because of the expansive and near infinite nature of these ethical dilemmas—with one question leading to another, which led to another— the pastoral moralists adopted a common strategy in their discourses. They attempted to articulate as clearly as possible what the line or boundary between ethical and unethical commerce looked like, while leaving “to the honest judgment of the trader”3 what was the appropriate moral decision for any particular situation. At the beginning of his sermon on Christian Economy, for example, Joseph Emerson quickly explained that “it is not my design to lay down particular rules and methods of operation; but to offer some general directions as to the temper of heart.”4 Joshua Bates also spoke of generalities and boundaries in his inquiry into ethics and economics. “In discoursing on this subject,” he wrote, “I have only to illustrate the duty of honest dealing between man and man; or, in other words, to point out the boundaries between honesty and fraud, and apply the subject to every enlightened conscience.”5 Henry Boardman likewise concluded his four hundred–page discourse on The Bible in the Counting House by similarly avoiding specific recommendations: “The great lesson I have wished to enforce in these discursive remarks is, that we should live to do good. . . . How you are to do this, must be left to your own enlightened discretion.”6 Disappointingly, this was as specific as the pastoral moralists dared to get. Occasionally the pastoral moralists would try to reduce morality in commerce to a simple formula. As Joshua Bates put it: “The religion of the Bible . . . commands us in general terms, to do unto others, as we would that they should do unto us.”7 This is the golden rule, the timeless and universal bedrock of Christian social ethics. But the devil, so to speak, was always in the details. As Orville Dewey confessed: the “Scriptures, like conscience, are a general directory. They do not lay down any specific moral laws of trade.”8 Even Francis Wayland—who, when he was writing as a Baptist minister and not as a clerical economist, joined the pastoral moralists’ search for that clear moral boundary—admitted that “the confines of justice and oppression are separated by a very shadowy limit.”9 Nevertheless, the pastoral moralists sought that “shadowy limit,” having faith that it was out there and sometimes defining it along the lines of the golden rule. But ultimately the original question of “what is right?” remained. The best that the pastoral moralists could do, therefore, was to try to identify the boundary between ethical and unethical commercial transactions, and leave the truly difficult decisions about application up to “the honest judgment,” “the temper of heart,” or the “enlightened conscience” of the individual merchant or trader.10

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In truth it would be impossible to overstate the importance of the pastoral moralists’ focus on limits and boundaries. They brought up the subject almost obsessively and at key points in their texts and sermons. Orville Dewey was particularly concerned with the subject. He wrote an entire discourse “On the Uses of Labor and the Passion for a Fortune,” and followed it with one “On the Moral Limits of Accumulation.” In the following passage, he summarized the main points of both texts: In my last discourse, I considered some of the evil consequences of the passion for accumulation; in the present, I propose to point out some of the moral limits to be set to that passion. In other words, the limits to accumulation, the wholesome restraints upon the passion for it . . . are the topics of our present meditation.11

On first glance this would appear to be typical Victorian principles and priorities. The unseemly and animal “passions” need “restraints” or “limits” imposed on them so that they do not harm others or the self. This is not an entirely inaccurate reading of this passage, but there are deeper intellectual contexts here that complement such an interpretation and provide a richer understanding of the pastoral moralists’ unique vision. Both the pastoral moralists and the clerical economists made an important and perhaps unconscious distinction that was central to their understanding of ethics and economics. During the antebellum era, the word passion was almost always a pejorative term meant to describe an impulse in human beings that had to be held in check. As many antebellum Christians understood them, people’s passions were usually for less-than-virtuous ends such as luxury or the lustful, gluttonous, or drunken gratification of the senses. Orville Dewey, for example, complained of an “insane and insatiable passion for accumulation” in American culture.12 The term desire, on the other hand, especially when used by the clerical economists, did not have a negative connotation, but was thought to describe a range of tastes that were natural and good in and of themselves. As Francis Wayland wrote on the very first page of his Elements of Political Economy: “the universe around us is composed of objects suited to gratify our desire, and thus minister to our happiness.”13 Desires were good, in other words, because they led to a personal happiness that, although materialistic, was not self-destructive. Problems arose, however, when natural and God-given desires turned into uncontrollable passions—a transformation that was dangerous both to individuals and to the nation. This anxiety about the passions is best understood as part of two larger intellectual contexts: the preoccupation with internal “balance” and the

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intellectual paradigm of faculty psychology. In antebellum culture, as historian Daniel Walker Howe explains, the self was thought to possess three “human faculties”: “the moral sense was properly supreme, followed in order of rightful precedence by rational self interest and the affections or passions.” There was a problem, however, in that the strength of these motives varied inversely with their position. Conscience, or the moral sense, which should be the supreme governor of conduct, was in fact naturally the weakest of motives, while the passions were the strongest, with prudential self-interest somewhere in between.14

The passions, in other words, were naturally (or sinfully) the strongest, and always threatened to dominate the other two. The virtuous individual, however, was one who had developed a robust enough conscience through moral education and earnest training to win the majority of those inner struggles and keep the passions in their place—an ongoing process that was entirely in keeping with the principles and goals of the virtue ethics tradition. The payoff for this constant inner struggle was, in the language of faculty psychology, the “balanced character”—one that had rightly ordered the three faculties of the moral sense (or conscience), self-interest (or prudence), and the passions, in precisely this order. There is a key ambiguity, however, in that self-interest occupies the middle space between conscience and the passions. Some views of human nature were simpler and more dualistic. There were always the passions, which were considered to be the base or animal side of mankind and which needed to be constrained. The superior faculty that did the constraining was either reason, which was more strictly intellectual, or conscience, which was more moral. The faculty psychology of the antebellum era, however, was tripartite, adding self-interest to the mix—an important variation and one that helps explain the confusion people experienced as they tried “to do a mercantile business successfully, on Christian principles.”15 As Daniel Walker Howe explains, including self-interest in the previously dualistic understanding of human nature was a product of the Enlightenment. “At the beginning of the period,” he writes of the eighteenth century, “self-interest had generally been considered one of the passions, but by the end, moral philosophers had definitely promoted it to the rank of a rational faculty.”16 In the antebellum era, self-interest was still considered morally inferior to conscience, but it had risen in the hierarchy to occupy this middling and thoroughly ambiguous position.

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All three of the groups investigated in this study—the clerical economists, the contrarians, and the pastoral moralists—had difficulty navigating the complexities of this tripartite scheme and still thought more easily in terms of dualities. For their part, the clerical economists lumped self-interest in with conscience, where it served a modern and utilitarian common good. The contrarians, on the other hand, saw self-interest as being claimed by the passions, and argued that it harmed far more people than it helped. How, they reasoned, could one love one’s neighbor as oneself while selfinterestedly competing against him? The pastoral moralists sought to divide self-interest in half. To their credit they accepted the ambiguity of selfinterest’s middling status, but they still sought to bring a dualistic order and precision to their moral universe by defining a boundary somewhere in the middle. They too wanted to think in terms of the dualities of good versus evil. Self-interest was good, useful, and acceptable up to a certain point, they argued, but beyond that point (or limit or boundary) it was evil, harmful, and unacceptable. Perhaps at this point a diagram would be instructive. Clerical Economists

Contrarians

Pastoral Moralists

Conscience Self-Interest Passions

Conscience Self-Interest Passions

Conscience Self-Interest Selfishness Passions

To the utilitarian clerical economists, self-interest was always an ally to the superior faculty of conscience—something that could be counted on not only to help suppress the passions of the “mass of men,” but also to help promote some of the more worldly virtues that Max Weber identified, such as industry, frugality, punctuality, and self-discipline. The contrarians, on the other hand, could see nothing but evil resulting from the motive of selfinterest. To them, if self-interest were not itself a passion, it was nevertheless allied with the passions because it consistently encouraged individuals to violate the dictates of their consciences and injure others, especially the powerless, for selfish gain. When the pastoral moralists dealt with the tripartite scheme of faculty psychology, however, they thought of self-interest as being pivotal, literally. It could go in either direction: either stoking the passions in its pursuit of selfish gain or allying itself with conscience in a way that ended up controlling the passions.

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Clearly defining the point at which this tripartite scheme could be divided in two was the major challenge that the pastoral moralists set out for themselves. It was also the source of the ambiguity they felt as they sought to navigate the problems of instructing people in how to be both true to their Christian faith and successful in their commercial pursuits. Self-interest, after all, could be enlisted as an ally of conscience to help subdue the passions, but it was nevertheless distinct from and subordinate to that higher faculty. If all one cared about was keeping the passions in check, then perhaps all one needed was self-interest. In many ways this describes the clerical economists’ position perfectly. Their main objective was to convince a skeptical audience that commercial activity was not antithetical to virtue. Their foundational argument was that individuals who engaged in commerce had to personally subdue their passions (sloth, drunkenness, prodigality, and the like) and forgo immediate gratification for a longer-term payoff. That was “prudential self-interest,” to use Daniel Walker Howe’s phrase, in action.17 That was also the place, as Max Weber pointed out, where “the Protestant ethic” of “worldly asceticism” overlapped with “the spirit of capitalism.”18 Apparently the clerical economists did not seem to care that what mattered most in shaping modernizing America was a Protestant ethic and not Protestant ethics. For them, although worldly self-interest was inferior to conscience, it could be called on to work for the common good of social and national stability. And here, once again, the clerical economists revealed their utilitarian priorities, emphasizing a national stability that would ultimately do the greatest good for the greatest number, a goal that was also consistent with their natural-theology belief in a benevolent God. Relating this back to faculty psychology, the clerical economists thought of self-interest as an inferior but supremely useful faculty when it came to establishing a nation and a national economy. When it came to the superior and perhaps religious faculty of conscience, they simply rejoiced that the two were similar enough to combine and together overpower the passions—a joint operation that was clearly the design of a clever and loving God, who through common grace (or the benevolent “invisible hand,” to invoke Smith’s thinking) provided for the flourishing of his creatures almost in spite of themselves. The clerical economists continued to recognize the distinctiveness of these two faculties, and that one was superior to the other, but they never spoke openly or clearly about conscience and what restrictions it might put on the commercial activity of the self-interested man. In other words, they never addressed—and outright refused to address—how conscience might be at odds with self-interest and might have to restrict the

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behavior of the economic actor. A prudential person, for example, might subdue his passions or delay his gratification, but also regularly cheat his competitors or customers. People acting according to self-interest, in other words, ran the risk of acting selfishly, even if they were in total control of their passions. This is where Christian faith and commercial activity, conscience and prudence, could still be dramatically at odds with each other. The clerical economists, however, always emphasized the harmony of conscience and self-interest, as well as the utilitarian alliance between them, and never the potential tension. Whenever the pastoral moralists spoke about self-interest, however, they did so with a certain ambivalence that acknowledged itself-interest’s importance, but also its potential dangers. Drawing on faculty psychology, they recognized that self-interest occupied the pivotal middle position between the base passions and the lofty conscience. And instead of being a reliable and constant check to the baser passions, they saw that self-interest could easily fall into being a passion itself. They did not think that self-interest was unequivocally evil, as they would say the passions were, but they did think that it could go in either direction, allying itself with either conscience above or the passions below. William Arnot, Francis Wayland (when speaking as a pastoral moralist), and Joshua Bates articulated this idea perfectly. In general all three men argued that the self-interested desire for material gain was itself not evil, but could become so if it were allowed to get out of control. “Emotions and energies that are in themselves innocent,” Arnot wrote, “are secretly turned aside; and, without any change in the outward appearance, are possessed by an unclean spirit.” This unseen inner transformation, however, would doubtlessly manifest itself one day in a person’s “outward appearance.” As Arnot continued, the entrepreneur who “started in a virtuous effort to win daily bread” would later become “animated by a sordid lust, and prostituted to objects hateful to God, and hurtful to his creatures.”19 In other words, a person’s initially “innocent” and “virtuous” self-interest could be slowly and imperceptibly twisted into a “hurtful” and “sordid” passion by the competing values and necessities of commercial life. Francis Wayland expressed the exact same sentiments in the appropriately entitled sermon The Perils of Riches. In a passage that is packed with meaning, he wrote: When we are solicited to violate a plain commandment of Christ, conscience promptly gives the alarm, and we turn away from the sin with abhorrence.

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When, however, the evil consists in doing in excess what can be innocently done only within limits; when conduct, perhaps harmless to others, paralyzes our moral sensibilities and disqualifies us for the discharge of duty; when the motives which at first impelled us may be insensibly exchanged for others which calm reflection would instantly pronounce to be wrong, we frequently pass, without heeding it, the boundary which separates virtue from vice, and the voice of conscience is hardly recognized until the chains of habit are revisited upon us, and we are fully committed to a course of ill doing. To no subject does this remark more emphatically apply than to the pursuit of wealth.20

Even though he does not reference this overtly, Wayland’s words here perfectly describe faculty psychology’s tripartite division of the human person and the danger that can come from an imbalanced character. Along with William Arnot and Orville Dewey, Wayland obviously cared about the limit or “boundary which separates virtue from vice” in self-interested commercial affairs. He felt the freedom to address this concern, however, only in his sermons. Having internalized the schizophrenic fact/value distinction of modern political economy, Wayland was also constrained by that distinction in his double-calling, or, one might say, in his double “character.” As a professor of political economy, and in his textbooks on the subject, he limited himself to the so-called facts of the science, and he likewise limited his ethical language to that of a thin utilitarian consequentialism. But as a Baptist minister and preacher of sermons to a needy congregation, Wayland both acknowledged and addressed the moral Perils of Riches that accompanied the development of a market-capitalist civilization and that threatened individuals. Thus in these sermons Wayland spent time illustrating the relative goodness of self-interest as an initial motivator. These “motives which at first impelled us,” he wrote, were “harmless” and promote actions that “can be innocently done only within limits.” But the danger, as always, was that people could violate those boundaries and have their self-interest take them away from the influence of conscience and into the realm of the selfish passions. Joshua Bates likewise ruminated on the dangers of commercial activity and came to the same conclusion. “The common maxims of trade,” he wrote, that “every man has a right to make as good a bargain, as he can”—“to buy as cheap, and sell as dear as he can,” it has been observed, are false and extremely pernicious, when taken without limitation; since they would thus break down the barriers between honesty and fraud. Yet with proper limitations, we said,

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they furnish a good general rule for the regulation of commerce and every species of trade.21

Bates’s words here illustrate two points common to all the pastoral moralists. One is the obvious obsession with “limitations” and “barriers.” The other is the more fundamental but less often acknowledged acceptance of the “common maxims of trade,” which would seem to violate the ethical maxims of the Christian faith. Along with the other pastoral moralists, Bates wanted to reassure his readers that such maxims were not wrong in and of themselves. On the contrary, those maxims actually “furnish a good general rule” in commerce, but only when they are subject to the right kind of moral boundaries. For example, it was shrewd to bargain (“to buy as cheap, and sell as dear as he can”), but not sinful or un-Christian. Such attitudes and activities were immoral only when they went unrestrained. The big question, as always, was when did an individual cross that line, burst through those restraints, and, as Wayland put it, “pass, without heeding it, the boundary which separates virtue from vice?”22 At what point did a person’s natural, healthy, and “innocent” self-interest become a passion that could do harm to either himself or his neighbor? As the next chapter will illustrate, the pastoral moralists answered those questions most clearly when they addressed the specific topics of competition, luxury, and speculation. It was also in addressing these issues that they displayed the depth of both their religious conviction and their commitment to the principles of economic liberalism. In other words, these topics show just how “adapted” they were. The pastoral moralists accepted the realities of the modernizing economy, but they also subjected them to the dictates of their Christian faith.

chapter fourteen

Of Competition and Liberalism, Luxury and Speculation

a l l o f the pastoral moralists were committed to the most basic principles of economic liberalism. Everyone, for example, agreed about the goodness of private property. Joseph Emerson’s entire sermon on Christian Economy was a defense of the proposition that “WE SHOULD BE CAREFUL THAT NONE OF OUR PROPERTY BE LOST.”1 And other sermons were nearly shameless in their thinly veiled references to John Locke. Walter Blake Kirwan, for one, proclaimed that “the possession of happiness is the principle and end of all our actions and passions. . . . Men are united in society only to procure it.”2 Likewise, Joshua Bates’s “A Discourse on Honesty in Dealing” was a veritable tribute to Locke, beginning with references to men’s rights “as social beings,” including the right of property, and only then stating that such ideas were “sanctioned by the authority of Inspiration.”3 He did not, in other words, start with the Bible and then build his economic system from there, but began instead with the foundations of Lockean liberalism and then explained how the workings of such a system, including the fact of competition among self-interested individuals, were consistent with Christian ethics. Competition, in many ways, was the crux of the matter. The commercial world was built on it, but the principles of Christianity seemed to be set against it. In short, this is the place where self-interest bumped up against the interests of others and potentially did violence to the Christian golden rule. “While we are endeavoring to secure our own property,” Joseph Emerson explained simply, “we may be tempted to injure our neighbor. His interest and ours may clash.”4 What was the good Christian to do in this situation— renounce competition entirely? Did putting one’s neighbor before one’s self 1 91

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always mean losing? And what about winning? Did success in one’s own endeavors have to mean the ruin of your competitors? One group of earnest and justice-minded Congregationalists in Rhode Island was so suspicious of “both the reality and the appearance of . . . competition” that they resolved to avoid it “as far as possible.” But as they went on to conclude: “Of course, this cannot be avoided entirely.”5 This type of realistic assessment of competition was one of the pastoral moralists’ most fundamental axioms. Like trade itself, competition was simply a reality—a fact of life in a liberal society that needed to be navigated properly, not condemned categorically. The unavoidable truth of the matter was that self-interested competition was a necessary component of a market-capitalist society. It was the motivating engine that drove the economy, but that also had to be restrained and subjected to the boundaries of Christian morality. “We are indeed to do to others as we would have them do to us,” Orville Dewey wrote, referencing directly the golden rule as his ethical guideline for commercial activity. But as he went on to argue, there was nothing “in Scripture, or in the laws of human brotherhood, that forbids this honest, not fraudulent, but honest competition between men’s exertions, faculties and wits.” Scripture might not sanction competition, the pastoral moralists argued, but neither did scripture forbid it. And then there was always the more commonsense approach. Was it really unfair to have superior knowledge or superior skills? Should one necessarily share that knowledge or those skills with others, and especially other competitors? “Must,” as Dewey asked, “the intelligent and the enterprising merchant raise up his dull and careless neighbor, to his own point of view, before we may deal with him?” “Certainly not,” he answered. Loving one’s neighbor as oneself did not mean that there had to be a leveling of knowledge and ability among them. A wise and skillful merchant was not obliged to share his rewards with his less able competitors, Dewey reasoned, just as a gifted painter was not obliged to share his prizes with his less talented artistic peers.6 In short the pastoral moralists answered the question of competition by stating that it was perfectly acceptable for individuals to pursue competitive and self-serving interests as long as they did not injure themselves (by violating their consciences) or their neighbors in the process. Dewey expressed it this way: A man may pursue his own interest; he may use his endeavor, sagacity, ability, but in the first place, he shall not pursue any traffic or make any contract to the

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injury of his neighbor; . . . and, in the next place, he shall not pursue his own ends to the extent of committing any fraud.7

Competition, again, so long as one played by the rules, was permissible. Unscrupulous practices, however, such as lying and cheating, or seeking to harm one’s competitor purposefully, were unacceptable and out of bounds. The Christian principle of “honesty will not allow us to take advantage of ignorance and inexperience,” Joshua Bates wrote. Neither will it allow one to engage in any “kind of deception concerning the quality, quantity, or current price of an article for sale,” or (most controversially) allow the creation of “monopoly . . . to enhance the price of goods, especially the necessaries of life.”8 All of these actions injured many while enriching some. “Attention to our own concerns,” as Walter Blake Kirwan summarized, is legitimate and within the boundaries of ethical economic activity. But caring for oneself becomes excessive and thus “culpable” when it leaves “neither leisure or [sic] inclination to promote the happiness of our fellow creatures. Then does self-love degenerate into selfishness.”9 This quotation encapsulates the pastoral moralists’ view about self-interested competition and its proper boundary. When an individual economic actor has no regard for the interest of others, the line has been crossed and self-interest is no longer a mere motivator or desire but is instead an uncontrolled passion that does harm to others. Francis Wayland agreed with this distinction between innocent and harmful commercial competition. Also using the language of the golden rule, he filled his address on “The Moral Law of Accumulation” with scenarios that illustrated the effect that certain actions would have on “my neighbor,” “his neighbor,” “others,” “the community,” and “the nation.”10 His general governing principle, which was rooted in economic liberalism, was that it was morally permissible to pursue wealth and even to compete against one’s neighbor; but “God has made nothing [including wealth] for itself alone, but every thing mainly for the sake of others.” Thus God permitted human beings to seek a personal fortune, but “God [also] intends that man should grow rich by adding something to the means of human happiness.” Those who do wrong in commercial affairs, Wayland explained, were those who, “instead of using his capital for a blessing, [use] it for a curse to his neighbor.”11 It was not immoral to act according to self-interest and seek that “capital” in the first place, as long as one did not harm others in seeking it. But if one were to forget one’s neighbors or hurt them in the process of pursuing wealth, then would “self love degenerate into selfishness,”12 and

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the motive that had begun so innocently become a passion with only harmful effects for self and others. To sum up this view of competition, it is important to point out that the pastoral moralists were resigned to the fact that America was going in a certain direction—away from republican notions of “community” and toward a more liberal notion of “society”—and that life within that society had to be lived in a certain way. There were costs to this process, to be sure, but all of the pastoral moralists were enthusiastic about their economically modernizing future. Living as a Christian within this new world, however, demanded a balance between moral principle and what Orville Dewey called “a certain expediency.” “It is expedient,” he wrote, “that every man should take care of himself. Others are not to step forward at every turn to rescue him from the consequences of his indolence or inattention.” How could a liberal society work otherwise? The law, for example, was based on a set of principles—justice, fairness, truth, and the like. In its day-to-day operations, however, the law did not punish every individual who acted unjustly, unfairly, or untruthfully. If it were to do so, as Dewey put it, “our tribunals would be overwhelmed with business.”13 Thus, while those charged with keeping the law hopefully never violated its principles or actively encouraged others to violate them, they had to use discernment about what behavior is questionable but tolerable, and what is intolerable and should be punished. In the end, Dewey wanted to draw yet another moral boundary—this time in the ambiguous operations of the law. He deemed such a boundary a necessary “concession to expediency,” but also one that should be discerned with great care. The analogy was that the realm of commerce likewise had to operate with moral ambiguities and imperfections in order to operate at all. Such was life in a liberal society, and Dewey made it clear that there was no going back. While “there should be a brotherly community of feeling,” he wrote, “there cannot be a brotherly identity of interests between the members of society.” People had to watch out for themselves as much as possible, while hopefully not doing themselves or their neighbors any harm. Given the new structure of things, there simply was not time for people to be concerned about the interests of others as they might “if they belonged to a community of Shakers, or of New Harmony men.” As long as one wanted to maintain the cherished liberal “principle of individuality, of individual interests, of individual aims,” one had to admit that America was a society, not a community, and that it should remain so. The structure of the nation was large and individualistic, not small and communalist, and

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so should be its standard of ethical behavior in the public realm of business activity.14 But even given such latitude, the pastoral moralists still believed that there were two misuses of money that clearly violated the golden rule and twisted an economic actor’s natural “desire” for wealth into an unhealthy and sinful “passion.” An individual could cross the line and transgress the moral limit in both the consumption of wealth and, as with competition, in its production. This excessive and immoral consumption or accumulation they called “luxury.” The injurious and immoral production of wealth they called “speculation.” Both of these transgressions were variations of the more general sin of avarice, but luxury was more rooted in the past, while speculation pointed to the future. Along with the clerical economists, the pastoral moralists were conflicted about luxury. As Henry Boardman argued: “To say for example, that the Bible prohibits all indulgence in luxuries would be taking very ambiguous and dangerous ground.” On the one hand, they saw luxury items as one of the goals and privileges of civilized life, as well as one of the most powerful incentives for people to work. The various crafts that produced luxury items also employed countless people who would not otherwise have a trade. The extreme proposal that there be an “absolute prohibition of luxuries” would therefore, as Boardman explained, “have a most disastrous influence upon the well being of mankind” because it would destroy these people’s livelihoods. Plus there was always the problem of discernment for individuals in different financial circumstances. What “may be a luxury, certainly an extravagance, to one family,” Boardman wrote, “is not to another.” He therefore concluded that it was both impossible and impractical to make a strict rule about what could be deemed a luxury and thus prohibited.15 But on the other hand, the pastoral moralists seemed to think that the desire for luxury items was getting out of control and corrupting people’s virtue. In the language of faculty psychology, luxury, which could be just as innocent as prudential self-interest, was itself becoming a passion. “The contest for gain in the arena of business,” Boardman wrote, “is carried forward as a race for ostentation in social life. . . . Luxury is made, not the exception, but the rule.” Luxury had become licentiousness with grave consequences for both individuals and for the nation. One by one, luxury weakened an individual’s “manly energy, rigid self-denial, and lofty virtue” so that he eventually grew “weak, effeminate, and dwarfish.” And a nation of such individuals—the body politic, so to speak—was equally effeminized. The “history of wealth has always been a history of corruption and downfall,”

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Dewey warned. “No lesson in history,” he concluded, “is so clear, so impressive, as this.”16 And unfortunately, America seemed to be running this risk. “As a people,” wrote Leonard Bacon in the midst of the Panic of 1837, we have gone mad with our sudden prosperity; and . . . have introduced from older and more profligate countries, habits of luxury ill suited to our republican state of society. . . . In brief, the whole country has been living not only “up to the means,” but “beyond the means.” . . . Old fashioned frugality has gone out of fashion; and . . . there has of course been a rapid deterioration of morals.17

This, in condensed form, was the republican nightmare. Prosperity itself was never an evil, but the American people were apparently following in the train of other nations and going “beyond” the proper limit in their pursuits of happiness and their consumption of wealth, with disastrous results for all—a subject that will be revisited in the conclusion to this section. But as always, the pastoral moralists never went to the point of questioning the economic order itself. Republican ideas about luxury, selfindulgence, and corruption, by their very nature, all had to do with the people who inhabited a given structure and not with the structure per se. They never criticized the system or mechanism of commerce as inherently evil or as invariably leading people into immoral behavior. The new economic system did bring up new problems and temptations, but the real problem, as they saw it, was with human nature and not the nature of any particular economy. They therefore made an important distinction between the system and the spirit that could animate that system. What is even more revealing about the pastoral moralists’ Christianized republican sensibilities is that they never used these sensibilities to question the underlying liberal assumptions that accompanied the developing economic structure. In fact, their republican values surface over and over again in the very same documents in which they unabashedly promoted liberal values, such as the individual pursuit of wealth. Orville Dewey, for example, the same man who wanted to uphold the cherished liberal “principle of individuality, of individual interests, of individual aims,” also wrote that “independence and luxury are not likely to be good for any man. Leisure and luxury are almost always bad for every man.”18 And Francis Wayland likewise did not dare “censure the natural desire in the bosom of every man to benefit his condition.” As far as he could see, “this desire is not only permitted, but encouraged in the Scriptures.”19 When properly managed, such a self-interested “desire” contributed to the well-being of both the individual and of society in general, simultaneously allowing for self-fulfillment while

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shoring up the nation’s stability, a conclusion that echoed the sentiments of Adam Smith. But as Wayland was quick to point out, this desire, like everything else, was subject to certain moral boundaries. Just “because the Bible allows of accumulation,” he argued, “it by no means follows that it allows of all accumulation.” “The desire of accumulation, within these limits,” he wrote, “is lawful; beyond them, it is sinful.” And when such a desire broke its bonds, he continued, it “is not only fatal to our spiritual interests, but, in the end, it is ruinous to even our temporal prosperity.” As he saw things, it was actually “as necessary to our prosperity to limit our desire as to possess the desire itself.”20 The human impulse to pursue property, after all, was natural and God-given. Thus Wayland did not want “to denounce as unchristian the accumulation of property in general.”21 Discerning the point at which the desire for accumulation became excessive—became a “passion,” in other words—and injured one’s neighbor was the more difficult and ultimately the more important task, but one that the pastoral moralists never discussed in great detail. Instead, and as always, such discernment was left up to the “enlightened conscience”22 of the individual in his or her particular circumstances. The pastoral moralists had similar thoughts about “speculation”—just one example of what they considered to be the sinful production of wealth and a practice that they recognized was becoming all too common in their market-capitalist America. All of the pastoral moralists—as well as the clerical economists for that matter—were unequivocal and unanimous on this issue: speculation was an evil. The clerical economists, however, did not express this opinion either forcefully or frequently in their writings on political economy. Instead of harping on the subject as a pastoral moralist would, they tucked away their brief comments in footnotes or asides, almost as if they were embarrassed of the subject but could not ignore it entirely. Henry Vethake, for example, devoted only a few pages to the subject of “unrighteous speculations,” which he likened to “swindling, or robbery.” A “more active spirit of speculation” he called “an evil,” an attitude that “easily degenerates, if stimulated to excess, into mere gambling; becoming then, more or less, a source of public corruption.” John McVickar made the very same points. In a footnote he addressed the vexing moral question of whether individual gains were made at the expense of the nation. When it came to speculation, he made it clear that “the wealth of the country merely changes hands, the profits are but the criterion of a rising market.” In other words, personal profit was morally acceptable, but it had to come from a

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business venture that somehow contributed to the welfare of other human beings.23 Both the pastoral moralists and the clerical economists were quick to clarify that not all commercial activity was speculative. In their own words, they wanted to make an important distinction “between the traffic of the honorable merchant and the art of the mere speculator.” As Leonard Bacon wrote, this difference between honest trade and speculation “is as wide as heaven.” The merchant whose business is to transfer commodities from the producer to the consumer, gives an augmented value to the commodities thus transferred, and has an equitable title to the value created by his skill, his capital, and his labor. The mere speculator, on the other hand, renders no actual service to the community. His whole art is, to get possession of commodities at one price, without any corresponding augmentation of their value. The mere speculator, whose only capital is his acquaintance with the arts of panic and excitement, whose hopes of success depend on the skill with which he calculates the expansibility of a bubble and the chances of its bursting, is twin-brother to the gambler.24

While it was acceptable for a merchant to hope for a handsome return on an investment, in other words, there was nothing redeeming about a speculator who artificially and duplicitously increased a commodity’s price. Such speculative transactions were wrong because they allowed individuals to profit, sometimes handsomely, while not creating any additional social or economic value. There was thus an important distinction to be made between the “legitimate departments of commerce,” as Andrew Peabody put it, and “the mass of speculators of every class and degree, who all swell the volume of credit without adding an iota to the general wealth.”25 “God intends that man should grow rich by adding something to the means of human happiness,” Francis Wayland wrote—summarizing the utilitarian purpose of commerce—and “adding something,” even “an iota,” was exactly what speculating failed to do.26 But in addition to this harsh utilitarian judgment, the pastoral moralists also wanted to draw attention to the negative effects speculation had on both the soul of the individual speculator and on the well-being of his neighbors. Regarding the first, all the pastoral moralists believed that business activity was intended to be a school for virtue. “To do business and get gain, honestly and conscientiously,” Orville Dewey wrote, “is a good thing. It is a useful discipline of the character.” Speculation, however, violated business’s every

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moral principle in both its means and its ends. To the speculator, wealth was the only end that mattered. People speculated in order to amass their personal fortunes and retire from work as quickly as possible. Such a goal was truly the worship of mammon and disastrous to an individual’s soul and character in every way. Instead of encouraging patience, for example, speculation encouraged haste. Instead of a life of moderation, speculation encouraged excess and luxury. And instead of reminding people to rely on God for their livelihoods and lives, speculation made people look to themselves and their own wits to win their fortunes. Dewey even warned that some people were looking with hope “to speculation itself, . . . as if it were a god, or some wonder-working magician.” The evil of speculation, in short, was “drawing away men’s minds from the healthful processes of sober industry” and destroying the very virtues that young entrepreneurs were supposed to be learning. As Boardman put it, “whenever this spirit enters the walks of trade, it must tend to degrade commerce to a system of shuffling and trickery.” Again, the mechanism of market capitalism that God had created for the happiness of the human race and the development of virtue in individual economic actors could be twisted by the spirit of speculation and turned against the very people it was meant to benefit.27 In addition to harming the virtue of individual entrepreneurs, speculation also injured other people, sometimes physically—an obvious ethical violation. In fact, according to the pastoral moralists, there was no doubt that speculation encouraged businessmen to hurt both their neighbors and their larger community as they sought their personal fortunes. “Speculation,” Henry Boardman wrote, looks only to its own good. . . . In the view of a confirmed speculator, the aggregate property of a community is but the stake in a game of chance; the people at large are the players; and each man is to get what he can, without caring, or even asking, who loses. Such a man must necessarily regard every one around him with a jealous eye. . . . They are his opposers, almost his enemies. What they gain, he loses; and he must lay his plans so as to make them lose, that he may pocket their losses.28

This “shrewd, cold-blooded operator”29 was exactly the type of businessman that Boardman and the other pastoral moralists loathed—thoroughly selfish and unscrupulous in his commercial transactions. In such a person, selfinterest had clearly degenerated from being a mere motivator to being a selfish passion.

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The pastoral moralists had deemed competition within certain moral limits permissible, but speculation encouraged attitudes and behaviors that were well outside of those boundaries. With speculation, competition ceased being an honest affair of “may the best man win,” and became instead a ruthless “survival-of-the-fittest” struggle for resources where the winner took all and the losers lost everything. “He would as soon speculate upon the property of the widow and the orphan,” Boardman added, as upon any other. It is not a question with him in arranging his projects, “How will this affect the interest of others?” . . . His motto is, “Each one for himself ”; and if in carrying out this very honourable and humane principle, he happens to ruin a few families of females and children, he comforts himself with the reflection, that “he was not aiming at their ruin, but only at his own advantage; and that if they have lost their property, it is an incidental evil.”30

This was the sociopathic attitude or “spirit” of speculation that polluted the individual and did harm to others. To the speculator, other people were nothing but means to the selfish end of amassing as much wealth as possible. Through speculation a person might “gain the world,” in the language of the Bible, but most definitely “lose his soul,” and injure others in the process. To the pastoral moralists, if the business community could encourage such poisonous activity and apparently not be checked by any external restraints, they indeed had a problem. The entire commercial world, if ruled by the spirit of speculation, would be little more than a den of iniquity and thus indefensible from any kind of Christian ethical perspective. But exactly where did the spirit of speculation fit into this commercial world? Was it merely an incidental part of the structure of things, a part that could be restrained and controlled while the mechanism chugged along, harmoniously doing its mostly virtuous work? Or did the spirit of speculation actually permeate the entire structure, coexisting with it in a symbiotic relationship in which it was impossible to separate the ghost from the machine? An even greater problem, as they perceived it, lay in the fact that this sin of speculation often went unpunished. On the contrary, in fact, the developing economic mechanism seemed to reward speculation. The unscrupulous man who cheated families out of their fortunes, for example, often lived in the biggest house in town. Henry Boardman expressed precisely this frustration: “it is a great social evil that speculators who have neither means nor moral

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principle, should, by a few reckless wagers at the stock-board, roll up a princely estate, and then use it to dazzle the town with their extravagance.”31 What did the pastoral moralists have to say about such flagrant injustices and the morality of a commercial system that seemed to foster them instead of hinder them—that made speculation both possible and even desirable?

chapter fifteen

Divine Retribution and “Das Adam Smith Problem” Revisited

t h e p a s t o r a l moralists’ response to the problem of greed and speculation emerged from their commitment to virtue ethics and their understanding of faculty psychology, and consequentially to their preoccupation with boundaries and balance. Just like wine was good but drunkenness bad; food was good but gluttony bad; sex was good but lust bad; so too even self-interested moneymaking was good but harm to oneself and one’s neighbor in its pursuit were bad. And the Christian with the well-trained conscience knew where that limit was and when he had crossed it; and if he did not know before his transgression, he would know soon afterwards by being punished for it. Drunkenness would lead to dissipation. Gluttony would lead to obesity. Lust would lead to licentiousness. All of these abuses of the body, in other words, led to repercussions that were borne by that same body. The sinner, in short, personally reaped what he had personally sown. But apparently greed and unscrupulousness, which harmed both the individual and those around him, sometimes led to earthly rewards instead of punishments. Again, sometimes the most selfish speculator lived in the biggest house in town. The pastoral moralists, however, wanted to make clear that individuals were not exonerated for their harmful actions simply because the system might not immediately punish them. And here they became rather otherworldly in their understanding of ethical prescriptions. “There is another tribunal,” Henry Boardman reminded his readers, “by which these cases are to be adjudicated,” and immoral behavior was immoral behavior, regardless of whether it was punished in this life or not. Boardman supposed 203

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that some might excuse themselves by arguing that they were acting only in accordance with the system—that as businessmen they were mere functionaries, cogs in an amoral machine that just happened to crush their fellow human beings as it operated. A businessman, for instance, might “speculate the fortune of an innocent family out of their possession into his own, and then have the audacity to attempt to soothe the victims of his villainy by telling them that it was a ‘fair business-transaction.’” But when tried “by the Scriptural standard of morality,” Boardman argued, “there is nothing ‘fair’ about them.” To the pastoral moralists, the argument that the system allowed and did not punish immoral business dealings was irrelevant. God punished individuals for their actions, and the economic mechanism, although powerful, could neither prevent this judgment nor excuse individuals for their transgressions. “To attempt to screen themselves behind the impersonality of ‘the bank,’” Boardman railed, “is only another proof that cupidity and cowardice are twin sisters.”1 Seeking refuge in the system itself, Boardman complained—and here he actually hinted at a critique of the discipline of political economy—would be “as though a highwayman should plunge his knife into you, and console you, while you were bleeding to death, by telling you that he had severed the arteries scientifically.”2 Just because the structure of the modern economy allowed for certain behavior—and the science of political economy might even say that such behavior was value-producing, or profitable—it did not mean that the behavior was morally permissible. As always, there were limits beyond which the speculator moved at his peril. On one level, the pastoral moralists recognized that all business was risky and therefore speculative. But they still wanted to make a moral distinction between “the sober methods of legitimate commerce” and the “workings of a speculating mania.” The distinction central to their understanding of commercial morality was, as always, a matter of limits or degrees. As Orville Dewey explained: “Every thing is bought on the expectation of selling it for more. But this rage for speculation, . . . this spirit of gambling in trade, is a different thing.” What the pastoral moralists did not like, and always made clear in their diction, was precisely this “rage,” or “mania,” or “delirium of speculation”—a “spirit” that they regularly compared to “the gambling spirit.”3 And as Boardman put it, in one of his most impassioned lines: “The briefest possible glance at the thing [speculatively selling worthless stock for profit] will show that this is not commerce, but gambling—sheer, down-right, unmitigated GAMBLING.”4 These italics and all capitals, which Boardman rarely used, are the written equivalent of raising one’s voice to a scream.

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He wanted his “unmitigated” hatred for speculation to come through to his readers as clearly and emphatically as possible. To the pastoral moralists, the problem was always with a flawed spirit of trade and not a flawed system. There was, in fact, a difference between the two, and they would always defend the system but try to Christianize the spirit that animated it; or, when that spirit was itself base and corrupting, as in the case of “a speculating mania,” the pastoral moralists sought to control it—to keep it within its prescribed limits. “The spirit of speculation,” Jason Whitman wrote, has become rife in the community. Friends and neighbors enter upon the hazardous course. . . . He begins to grow dissatisfied with his moderate but regular gains, to feel the first faint promptings of a restless haste to be rich. . . . Young merchants and merchants, who for years have pursued the even tenor of their way, gradually amassing wealth; have caught the spirit, have felt the restless haste to be rich, have plunged into the current, and have fallen prostrate before the pressure of the times.5

The “times” that Whitman was referring to was the era of “speculating mania,” especially in western land sales, that preceded the Panic of 1837. In the mid-1830s, these moralists lamented, Americans had been animated by a collective greed that drove them and their nation toward ruin. When the crash came in the spring of 1837, they argued, these speculators, sometimes including themselves, were merely reaping what they had sown. The panic, of course, can also be explained with a more “worldly” understanding of causality. On July 11, 1836, President Andrew Jackson issued the Specie Circular, which ordered that tracts of public land be purchased with specie and not bank notes. In early 1837, the Bank of England—the very seat of capitalist power in the Anglo-American world—“became alarmed . . . by the rapid expansion of loans to America and by an outflow of gold” from the East to the West. As a consequence, the bank “restricted credit to firms doing business with the United States,”6 a restriction that then spread through the established banks of the eastern seaboard, all the way to the banks of the western frontier. Britain also happened to suffer from poor harvests that year, which drove up the price of grain. British consumers therefore spent more money on food and less on cotton clothing, which lowered the demand and thus price of the American-grown staple and depressed the market. It is therefore accurate to say that this panic began at both the centers and the peripheries: in the policy decisions of political and economic leaders, and in the overextended economic frontier of the American West and South.7

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To those stuck in the middle—in the banking and commercial cities of the East Coast—the economic contraction was equally punishing. Lasting until 1844, the depression that followed this panic was one of the most prolonged and severe in American history—unlike anything before it and comparable to the financial crisis of 1893 and the Great Depression of the twentieth century.8 And as in the great crash of 1929, speculating did, in fact, play a role in bringing about the crisis. The antebellum pastoral moralists, therefore, although they had virtually nothing to say about the economic policies of Andrew Jackson or the Bank of England, were partly right in their assessment of the panic’s causes. Widespread speculation in western land had been driving the American economy in the mid-1830s, and in 1837, helped by Jackson’s Specie Circular, the bubble burst and the economy contracted. Financial crises, such as the one that began in 1837, always made clear the moral lenses through which individual social commentators viewed their developing market-capitalist world. The clerical economists, the contrarians, and the pastoral moralists all showed their truest colors whenever the economic mechanism broke down. For the pastoral moralists, what mattered most was their distinction between a good structure and an unclean spirit. The clerical economists were virtually silent during widespread economic malfunctions, but their silence speaks volumes. Having championed so earnestly the utilitarian goodness of the economic mechanism, they had precious few things to say when that mechanism turned from being a blessing for mankind into a curse. And as for contrarians such as Orestes Brownson, he wanted to call down anathema on both their houses. To him the financial crisis revealed the inherent injustice and violence at the heart of developing market capitalism. The panic that began in the spring of 1837 also launched Brownson into the most socially radical phase of his career. The crisis that had been building during the winter and early spring paralyzed the banking system on May 9 and 10, 1837. On May 28 Brownson preached his “apocalyptic” sermon Babylon Is Falling, and on May 29 “he attended his last meeting of the Transcendentalist Club.”9 This did not mark the end of Brownson’s interest in religious romanticism and idealism, but it did indicate a shift in his intellectual focus away from theological issues and more toward matters of social justice and economic structures—a focus that would culminate in his 1840 “Essay on the Laboring Classes.” During these four years, the financial crisis deepened and Brownson’s rhetoric became increasingly radical. Unlike either the pastoral moralists or the clerical economists, though, who blamed

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greedy individuals for the nation’s economic woes, Brownson attacked the system itself. To Brownson, the economic machine was neither godly nor an impartial school for personal virtue, but immoral from top to bottom. As he interpreted events, the financial crisis of the late 1830s had merely made the evil effects of the evil system felt by more than the laboring classes alone, whom it had long oppressed. Now the rest of America was also reaping the whirlwind for having sown to the wind of a market-capitalist modernity. The pastoral moralists, on the other hand, both feared and respected the new economy in which they lived. In their opinion, even with all of the vices, abuses, and excesses that it might encourage, the new economic engine still caused more good than harm, and thus should remain up and running smoothly. Henry Boardman, for example, disliked speculation because it threatened to ruin not only the moral character of individuals, but the efficiency of an economic mechanism that met people’s physical needs. Throw into the economy, he wrote, “the delirium of speculation, and it is like withdrawing the balance-wheel from a massive piece of machinery. Its movements, before harmonious and regular, become spasmodic and untractable, until in the end it may destroy itself and every thing within its reach.”10 All good things, especially in the economy, have their limits. They need to be held in balance. Even the self-interested “desire of wealth,”11 the very thing that drove the economic machine, had to be restrained, and restraint was precisely what the spirit of speculation militated against— ruining in the process both individuals and, in 1837, the nation’s economy. This was faculty psychology, virtue ethics, and retributive justice writ large. According to the pastoral moralists, what was true of individuals was true of collectivities, even in the increasingly “disenchanted” modern economy. Using the language of faculty psychology, both persons and nations needed balance. They also needed to exercise and strengthen their conscience, whether individual or collective, so that it could subordinate their unruly passions and their errant self-interest. Self-interest itself was neutral, or perhaps amoral, capable of doing great personal and utilitarian good; or running out of control, degenerating into a passion and doing great harm to individuals and the republic. Unlike other moral trespasses, however, these economic sins did not always yield their bitter fruit right away. In fact, in the short term, they could be materially rewarded. In answer to their original question about how to engage in commerce both successfully and ethically, in other words, the pastoral moralists answered that there was no necessary correlation between a virtuous character and a prosperous business enterprise. A merchant could be a moral success while being

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an entrepreneurial failure, while less scrupulous businessmen—speculators, for instance—could succeed spectacularly at amassing a fortune and flunk out of the school of virtue. Thus, even according to the pastoral moralists, vice seemed to pay off sometimes. Speculation, greed, and competition that harmed others could be integral parts of an individual’s successful pursuit of happiness. The clerical economists differed from the pastoral moralists on this point. In their optimistic view of things, virtuous behavior could lead only to economic success, and success could come only from virtuous behavior. The laws of political economy supposedly demanded that this be the case. As Francis Wayland put it succinctly: “where virtue, frugality, and respect for right exist, riches will, by natural consequence, accumulate.”12 And as Alonzo Potter elaborated, Christians should perceive “the hand of God in the dispensations of nature—giving to virtue the ‘world that now is, as well as that which is to come.’”13 God rewarded the virtues—especially the virtues associated with Weber’s “worldly asceticism”—both on Earth and in heaven. The new discipline of political economy merely described in greater detail how God’s laws worked. To better explain the inner workings of the clerical economists’ and the pastoral moralists’ differing perspectives on the relationship of wealth and virtue, it is worth returning to an earlier problem. Das Adam Smith Problem, stated most simply, is that there is an apparent inconsistency between Smith’s emphasis on sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and his emphasis on self-interest in The Wealth of Nations. Using the language of faculty psychology to explain this, Smith’s first book prioritized the superior faculty of conscience, and his second the middling faculty of prudence. Some scholars seeking to reconcile the two works have come only to what they have called “a partial resolution”14 to the problem. They claim that the two texts can be harmonized by going back to The Theory of Moral Sentiments, recognizing that in that text Smith declared prudence itself a virtue, and then seeing how that declaration “implicitly defended the acquisitive, commercial society analyzed so thoroughly in [The Wealth of Nations].” The connection between the two books, in other words, was this emphasis on prudence, which Smith proclaimed a virtue, although an inferior one. According to this “partial resolution,” therefore, The Wealth of Nations was not devoid of ethical considerations. It was not, in other words, an entirely amoral text, but it did promote what amounted to a secondary or inferior morality.15 This “partial resolution,” however, leaves two unresolved dilemmas for Smith’s disciples—dilemmas that return to the moral paradox of a market-

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capitalist civilization. The first is that the now sacrosanct but secondarily virtuous prudence can actually inflame the passions—a problem that critics of developing market capitalism, such as Stephen Colwell and Orestes Brownson, were always quick to point out. Basing a society on prudence might provide “a virtuous underpinning to the logic of acquisitive, selfinterested commercial society,” but it can also end up working in alliance with the basest of the faculties. “For Aristotle,” as Spencer Pack writes, “the use of money to make more money knows no limit; this mode of acquisition tends to become an all-consuming passion.” But Smith never addressed this question, and as Pack concludes, his “silence is significant.”16 For their part, the clerical economists followed in this tradition, remaining virtually silent, as they were in 1837, about the possibility that the self-interested pursuit of happiness could spin out of control and harm self, neighbor, and nation. In other words, they were aware of the problem, but like Smith they always ignored it. The second unresolved issue is that although prudence might unify Smith’s two texts, it is still an inferior virtue. This is why Pack calls it a “partial resolution.” Prudence might be a part of both texts, but sympathy, which is central to The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is nowhere to be found in The Wealth of Nations. This is why there was das Adam Smith Problem to begin with. And for those seeking a seamless fusion of the two books, there is still a gaping hole. There might be a “virtuous underpinning”17 of prudence in the commercial society that Smith described in The Wealth of Nations, but there is still no sympathy in it. In other words, there is a consonance between the two texts, but literally a devalued one—one that comes only when one lops off the concern for sympathy entirely and focuses instead on the inferior virtue of prudence. And this, again, was the world that the clerical economists were happy to live with. Being the defenders of commercial civilization that they were, they always wanted to highlight the good utilitarian fruit that a society based on self-interest would yield. Thus they spoke confidently about how—in the obvious goodness and providence of God—the virtuous behavior of individual economic actors would lead to personal and national wealth. They had nothing to say, however, about the wages of economic sin. But again, neither did Adam Smith. They did issue the usual injunctions against intemperance, sloth, and prodigality, but these were trespasses whose financial repercussions could be clearly seen and even predicted. The real moral threats at the heart of their developing market-capitalist world (envy and avarice manifested in speculation) they left untouched or relegated to their footnotes.

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There is another possible solution to das Adam Smith Problem, however, and one that does not reduce the virtues to prudence and prudence alone. It is possible to synthesize Smith’s two texts such that sympathy still matters and is in relation to the prudence of Wealth of Nations, but, unsurprisingly, is in tension with it. Drawing on faculty psychology, the pastoral moralists came to their own resolution of das Adam Smith Problem by recognizing that the individual is not uniform (operating on either sympathy or self-interest or the passions alone) but is internally divided and constantly striving to achieve the balanced character that comes with the right ordering of these three faculties. The difficulty with this solution, as Amos Witztum describes it, “is that the different components of human character can be considered in complete segregation,”18 with Smith principally concerned with sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and prudence in The Wealth of Nations. This is a “complete segregation” of the human person, however, that is consistent with faculty psychology. The way through this difficulty, as Witztum goes on to explain, “requires the tying together of sympathy, as a capacity, and selfinterest, as a motive”19 —a balancing act that is also consistent with faculty psychology. Or as another Smith scholar puts it, self-interest is “a motivating force” and sympathy “a regulating force.”20 One supplies the drive while the other supplies the necessary governance and occasional restraint of that drive. As Henry Boardman described it perfectly: “The motive power which propels the vast machinery of commerce, its iniquitous no less than its beneficent agencies, is the desire of wealth. . . . Its perpetual tendency is to excess.”21 The pastoral moralists believed that the self-interest of Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the sympathy of his Theory of Moral Sentiments can and do coexist within individuals, but they do so only with a great deal of tension, with the tendency to excess of the one being constantly held in check by the regulating force of the other. As Witztum puts it, the fact that all “human beings are naturally motivated to pursue their own affairs . . . does not mean that they cannot be endowed with the capacity to feel for others.” The existence of self-interest, in other words, does not make such a person “incapable of sympathy,”22 but they are different impulses acted on in different circumstances. As the pastoral moralists well knew, just as there was a tension between the passions and self-interest, there also existed a tension between selfinterest and conscience. In both cases, the inferior faculty was the driving force and the superior the regulator of it. The clerical economists were primarily concerned with the relationship between the passions and selfinterest, and they, like Smith, wanted to hallow self-interest as an effective,

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even if morally inferior, social stabilizer and check to the passions. The pastoral moralists wanted to explore the more challenging ethical territory that existed between the competing claims of self-interest and conscience. In other words, they were concerned with the point at which the motive of self-interest, which they did not consider to be inherently evil, crossed the line and led to actions that were clearly vicious. And for the pastoral moralists, those proper bounds were defined best by the golden rule of the New Testament—“whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them”23 —which is in many ways how Smith defined sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. For Smith, sympathy involved an “imaginary change of places” with another individual—an attempt “to feel as others would, had one been in their position.”24 The conclusion that the pastoral moralists reached—and one that squares with a faculty-psychology solution to das Adam Smith Problem—was that it was acceptable for prudential selfinterest to drive an individual, but sympathy-driven conscience ultimately had to keep that self-interested activity within its proper limits. According to the pastoral moralists, this type of self-interest within the bounds of conscience alone is what made a Christianized market-capitalist society possible. It is also what made it acceptable. Recognizing that there would always be a tension between self-interest and conscience, the pastoral moralists decided to live with it and sought to understand the nature of the relationship and where the nebulous boundary was between the two. Religiously based sympathetic values did not make self-interested commercial behavior impossible, they concluded. Instead, it provided the all-important check to that commercial behavior. The pastoral moralists therefore acknowledged commercial activity as inevitable, but they also issued a stern warning to those Christians engaged in it that not all activity was permissible. In their vision of society, Christianity needed to adapt to meet the new challenges of the times, but the market also had to conform to the inviolable principles of the Christian faith. What they sought in their inquiries were ways to apply the timeless moral truths of Christianity to the economic landscape of modernizing America. Christianity, after all, was “a religion for universal man” and thus “must be capable of meeting him in these new, ever-varying, and complex relations, and of prescribing adequate rules for his guidance therein.”25 For their part they wanted to identify those rules as best they could and pass them along to their listeners and readers. As the nation learned in 1837, and as the pastoral moralists were quick to point out, a just God would not suffer such transgressions for long.

conclusion

Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon

And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? For my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then he said to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.1 21 3

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q u o t i n g a long passage from the Bible is perhaps an odd way to end a book, but then again, perhaps this has been an odd book from the start, and this an appropriately odd passage with which to conclude it. In the introduction, for example, it was argued that while context was central to understanding the three antebellum responses to Northern market capitalism, it was the sociointellectual rather than the socioeconomic context that mattered most. The historical actors investigated here were not nearly as concerned with the new political and economic structures themselves as they were with the theological and ethical challenges of living in a world increasingly defined by those structures. Thus they commented less on the visible realities of banks, political parties, and canals—and even slavery—and focused instead on the invisible problems of self and society in their American modernity, seeking in this highly unstable intellectual environment both transcendent meaning and ethical certainty. Such certainty, however, was impossible to come by, except within the more limited horizons of the moral philosophies that accompanied their antebellum “characters.” The utilitarian clerical economists, for example, were all educators with a cosmic and national point of view, and an overriding desire for intellectual and social stability. The contrarians were self-styled social outsiders and intellectual gadflies who cared more about the unwavering principles of their faith than the practical outcomes of their actions, adhering to a rigid biblical deontology of Christian humanitarianism and concern for the poor. And the pastoral moralists, for their part, were all ministers who cared most about the state of their parishioners’ souls as they attempted to navigate the ethical ambiguities of a market-capitalist economy. Ambiguity, it was argued in the introduction, would be a central and abiding theme throughout the book, and not just for the pastoral moralists. When it came to Christian ethics and capitalist economics, no lens was large enough to encompass the entire picture; no language rich enough to describe the full range of questions accompanying a market mechanism that was simultaneously global, local, and relational; and no ethical tradition systematic enough to answer all of those questions. And so with each group, some questions either went unanswered or were intentionally avoided. Not having all of the answers, or perhaps the wherewithal to ask some of the difficult questions, however, is not unique to these antebellum thinkers. Living in the midst of modernity’s fragmentation of the human person into religious/scientific, aesthetic/rational, moral/pragmatic, these Northern believers could not agree about the ethical standard by which they would evaluate their market-capitalist world, even given their common Christian

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faith. And as the fragmentation of modernity has turned into the incoherence of postmodernity, the answers are no easier to discover. Thus it seems that moral philosophies and the “characters” who embody them are just as incomplete and occasionally confusing today as they were two hundred years ago, when capitalist structures first dotted the landscape. In the meantime, the market capitalism of the nineteenth-century North turned into the industrial capitalism of the twentieth-century American nation, which has turned into the information capitalism of the twenty-first-century global village. The difference in these economic systems, though, is largely a matter of degree and not of kind. Capitalism has expanded and “matured,” some would say, but not significantly changed. The same continuity is true of the ethical responses to capitalism. Over the past two hundred years, normative musings about life in capitalism’s “iron cage” have taken a similar tripartite form. According to some, the argument is reducible to an almost mathematical calculation of profits and losses; and once the cost/benefit analysis is complete, the answer is clear: capitalism materially benefits more people than it harms. As the argument goes, whether one is talking about a region, a country, or the entire world, some variety of free-market capitalism is certain to raise all boats. It is simply unsurpassed at providing the greatest earthly good for the greatest number. According to its cultured despisers, however, capitalism’s gains are always made on the backs of a miserable working class. Regardless of whether that class is experiencing the jarring transition to capitalist forms of labor discipline for the first time or has long been a docile collection of wage slaves, the work is nonetheless alienating, inhumane, and dehumanizing. In addition, there is the obviously unjust distribution of profits in such a system, with the capitalists and managers taking far more than their fair share of the pie, while leaving the laboring masses to fight over the crumbs. And finally, there are the less tangible questions about the effects of capitalism on the character or virtue of the individual economic actor. As people are more intimately connected to the self-interested inner workings of the capitalist machine, do they become more materialistic, avaricious, and selfish? As with the pastoral moralists, those who usually ask these kinds of questions are not avowed enemies of capitalism, prescribing a total renunciation of all things commercial, but they are sounding an alarm. This entire project began with the desire to address a single question: what did Christians in America think about capitalism when capitalism was first something to be thought about? In seeking to understand and ethically evaluate our global-capitalist present, I sought answers in the past, in the

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thoughts and reflections of Christians who found themselves living in the midst of capitalism’s structures for the first time. What I discovered is that there is not one “Christian” answer to this question but three. When it came to reconciling their faith with these new economic realities, these thinkers had to make intellectual and ethical compromises. This book has been a detailing of those compromises as these antebellum religious “characters” embodied one ethical tradition (either utilitarianism, deontology, or virtue ethics), while neglecting the other two. This is in part a modern dilemma, with the phenomenon of capitalism creating a whole new range of ethical questions, the answers to which are complicated by modernity’s ethical fragmentation. Yet when it comes to the interaction of Christian ethics and commercial activity in general, the complexity of these ethical issues stretches back not just two hundred years to the beginning of capitalist economic systems, but two thousand years to the very origins of Christianity and the recorded words of Christ. Indeed, the parable of the unjust steward is not what one would expect. It ends with a familiar admonition—“Ye cannot serve God and mammon”—but the story that leads to the moral is nearly impenetrable to modern interpreters.2 For instance, rather than punish the unjust steward for losing more of his money, the rich man in the parable commends him for his prudence. Even more confusing, though, is the fact that Jesus himself does not condemn the steward for his trickery, but actually encourages his disciples to emulate him, making for themselves “friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.” This is obviously where this book derives its title, and as a final word, it is worth some explanation. By apparently calling Northern Christians “friends of the unrighteous mammon,” I sought to acknowledge but also challenge the opinion of many scholars that antebellum Christians were hypocrites—people whose thoughts were presumably on the next world, but who also formed close and compromising alliances with the economic powers of this one. Such a conclusion, of course, is not without evidence, and many of the people investigated here were far from saintly. The clerical economists, for example, cared a great deal about the wealth of nations and mounted a robust justification of both the utilitarian goodness of worldly riches and its science of political economy. But while they joined with Adam Smith in defending materialistic self-interest, they themselves were not principally motivated by materialistic self-interest. Instead of wanting personal wealth above all, they wanted national wealth; and instead of wanting to ensure the continued viability and existence of the Whig Party, they wanted to ensure the intellectual viability

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of natural theology and the continued existence of a Christian cosmology in the hearts and minds of their fellow Americans. Developments in the sciences of geology and then Smith’s political economy had threatened the unity that was supposed to exist between natural theology’s book of scripture and book of nature, and they wanted to mend the rift before it widened. In other words, they rightly sensed the coming of modernity’s “disenchantment of the world,” to use Max Weber’s phrase, and they wanted to stop it. They also wanted to defend the goodness of their God, whose creation they believed was naturally ordered to provide the greatest good for the greatest number. Instead of a cruel, Malthusian god whose economic mechanism regularly starved the overpopulated poor, they described a God who cared about the material well-being of his earthly creatures, even if such a care could be considered a hedonistic concern. Better, they reasoned, to have a worldly yet loving God, than the distant and silent engineer of a global killing machine. And although this description might be stark, this is indeed how these supposed “friends of the unrighteous mammon” understood the choice and what was at stake. But as the parable actually reveals, the biblical phrase “friends of the mammon of unrighteousness” is not a disparaging description of worldly Christians, but a command—a strange command—that Christians should be even worldlier. It is difficult to know how the contrarians Stephen Colwell and Orestes Brownson would have interpreted this passage. As subscribers to a biblical deontology, they would have to recognize this as one of Christ’s commands. But as Christian humanitarians and advocates for the poor, they would also have to confront a parable that condemns neither the rich man for his riches, nor the unjust steward for his self-serving fraud. It would obviously be easier for them to focus on less ambiguous verses such as “Ye cannot serve God and mammon”; “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”; and “the love of money is the root of all evil.”3 These are the kinds of verses that made their way into Colwell’s long list of biblical proof texts and into Brownson’s powerful rhetoric. The parable of the unjust steward and the admonition to “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness” appear in neither. Most likely this is because both Colwell and Brownson were passionately uncompromising in their defense of the defenseless and in their attacks on the greedy and callous managers who exploited them. A parable that confusingly encourages compromise with the world simply does not fit into their understanding that God and poor people are good, while mammon and self-interest are evil. By adhering to

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this dualistic view of worldly wealth—a view that is supported by most of the biblical passages on the subject—there is not much room for subtlety or nuance. To the contrarians, self-interested actions are always selfish actions because they invariably lead to the benefit of one person and the detriment of others. And yet the parable of the unjust steward is not so simple. The steward’s actions are undeniably dishonest and the rich man loses more of his wealth as a result, but some good does emerge from the episode. Financially speaking, of course, the biggest winners are the debtors who ended up paying back only a fraction of what they had borrowed. But the other obvious winner is the steward, whose dishonesty did not earn him wealth, but it did win him friends whom he hoped would assist him while he was unemployed—a shrewd calculation that both the rich man of the story and Jesus recognized and commended. In this light, perhaps it is appropriate to dub the unjust steward the patron saint of self-interest—a figure venerated for his ability to remain living in material comfort through the manipulation of both finances and friends. No doubt both Colwell and Brownson would have disparaged such a figure—in all of their writings on economics and ethics, they never commented on the potentially positive influence of the self-interested economic actor. After 1840, though, Brownson changed his mind. Instead of seeing mammon as a wedge that drove both individuals and social classes apart, he increasingly saw it as an adhesive, beneficially linking people together into bonds of economic interdependence. “Man is, in no sense, sufficient for himself,” he declared in 1844, repudiating the hyper-individualism of his youth.4 Instead of the sovereign self, happily liberated from the entanglements of church, state, economy, and even family, Brownson now venerated the connectedness of human beings, defined by their institutions and traditions, and united in their efforts to provide for their collective physical needs. Thus the new Brownson attacked his earlier belief in the “anti-Christian character of trade and business in general” and exalted trade instead as “a grand promoter of man’s communion with man.”5 Not all self-interested economic actions, in other words, were necessarily selfish and alienating to other people. In fact, as Brownson now believed, one could even use unrighteous mammon to make friends, ultimately strengthening the human family instead of splintering it. Regarding these more relational aspects of unrighteous mammon, it is difficult to know how the pastoral moralists would have interpreted this parable. On the one hand, it is simply impossible to square the steward’s

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actions with the virtue ethics tradition that the pastoral moralists stood within because his actions were so clearly unvirtuous. But on the other hand, his actions are accepted as perfectly fitting in the world of money lending and deal making. This commendation, however, does not mean that his actions are rewarded. The cheated rich man, for instance, does not restore the steward to his previous position. Nor does this commendation mean that the realm of unrighteous mammon is henceforth sanctified, but, significantly, it does appear to be sanctioned. From the start of the parable to its conclusion, mammon remains unrighteous and in conflict with serving God, which is precisely why the story and its moral are so confusing. It appears to have a rather uncomplicated conclusion (serve God and not mammon), but it also contains a command to use mammon in the service of God. Thus, strangely, “the mammon of unrighteousness” is the means, while “everlasting habitations” are the ends, with the disciples left to work out for themselves—with much fear and trembling—the tension of living in between. Such a tension does in fact square with the virtue ethics tradition—a tradition that encourages people to attend to the formation of their character as they navigate the challenges and complexities of life. According to the pastoral moralists, the real followers of Christ would never be encouraged to serve mammon, but neither would they be instructed to shun it, retreating as much as humanly possible from the morally perilous world of market capitalism. Instead, they would be encouraged to engage with such a world, thinking of it as neither completely good nor evil, but as a school for their character, full of constant examinations that they could either pass or fail. As Orville Dewey expressed the dilemma: “Conscience, indeed, commands us to do right; but the question is, what is right?”6 The pastoral moralists never fully answered this question, but neither did the clerical economists nor the contrarians. Within the boundaries of their more specific ethical traditions, they could articulate coherent but incomplete moral responses. These ethical traditions gave their “characters” particular masks that they could use to see, describe, and even solve some of the ethical challenges of their market-capitalist world, but not all of them. Ultimately, even those masks were just more “seeing through a glass darkly,”7 allowing their “characters” to know in part what they, on their antebellum stage, had presumed—and hoped—to know in full.

Notes

introduction 1 . Matt. 6:24 (King James Version). 2. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981 ), 26–27. 3. Carl N. Degler, Out of Our Past: The Forces That Shaped Modern America, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1 984), 2. 4. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: Rinehart, 1 951 ). 5. For examples, see Paul E. Johnson, “The Market Revolution,” in Encyclopedia of American Social History, 3 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1 993), 1 :545–560; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 991 ); Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway, eds., The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800–1880 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996); and Sean Wilentz, “Society, Politics, and the Market Revolution, 1 81 5–1 848,” in The New American History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1 990), 51 –71 . 6. In addition to the works on the market revolution, see Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1 999), esp. 1 3–1 4; Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (New York: Norton, 1 966); Alan Kulikoff, “The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 46 ( January 1 989): 1 20–44; and Harold D. Woodman, “Economy from 1 81 5 to 1860,” in Encyclopedia of American Economic History: Studies of the Principal Movements and Ideas, ed. Glenn Porter (New York: Scribner, 1 980), 66–90. 7. Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 984), 3–1 9. 8. R. H. Tawney, foreword to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner, 1 958), 1 (b). 9. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner, 1 958), 91 . 1 0. Ibid., 54. 1 1 . Ibid., 181 .

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1 2. Henry A. Boardman, The Bible in the Counting House: A Course of Lectures to Merchants (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 853), 46. 1 3. Sellers, Market Revolution, 5. 1 4. John McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, Being a Republication of the Article Upon that Subject Contained in the Edinburgh Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Together with Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Summary of the Science (New York: Wilder and Campbell, 1 825), 1 86. 1 5. As is explained in greater detail below, this term and this concept come from Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1 984), 27–31. Although potentially tedious, I will respect MacIntyre’s practice of always putting the word in italics. 1 6. Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1 997), 4. 1 7. Henry F. May’s Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York: Harper, 1 949) is still a good book-length treatment of religion and economics in America, but is now over half a century old. May also devotes only two chapters out of eighteen to the antebellum churches before moving on to the period after the Civil War. Besides May, there are only four recent books that approach this subject, two of them intellectual history and two of them social history: John Patrick Diggins, The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-Interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Robert Wuthnow, Poor Richard’s Principle: Recovering the American Dream through the Moral Dimensions of Work, Business, and Money (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1 996); Jama Lazerow, Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1 995); and William R. Sutton, Journeymen for Jesus: Evangelical Artisans Confront Capitalism in Jacksonian Baltimore (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). The rest of the noteworthy work done on antebellum religion and economics in the past twenty years is in articles and edited volumes. See, for example, Mark A. Noll, ed., God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Nathan Hatch, “The Second Great Awakening and the Market Revolution,” in Devising Liberty: Preserving and Creating Freedom in the New American Republic, ed. David Thomas Konig (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1 995): 243–264; Michael Zuckerman, “Holy Wars, Civil Wars: Religion and Economics in Nineteenth-Century America,” Prospects 16 (1991 ): 205–40. In a related field, there are some excellent monographs on nineteenth-century British religion and economics: Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1 988); and A. M. C. Waterman, Revolution, Economics and Religion: Christian Political Economy, 1798–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 991 ). There are also some outstanding treatments of American religion and economics in the colonial and revolutionary eras. See, for example, Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1 967); James D. German, “The Social Utility of Wicked Self-Love: Calvinism, Capitalism, and Public Policy in Revolutionary New England,” Journal of American History 82, no. 3 (1995): 965–98; Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: Norton, 1 995); John Frederick Martin, Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991 ); Mark Valeri, “The Economic Thought of Jonathan Edwards,” Church History 60, no. 1 (1 991 ): 37–54. For examples of the “social control” school, see Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1 978); Joseph Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

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1 963); John R. Bodo, The Protestant Clergy and Public Issues, 1812–1848 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1 954); Charles I. Foster, An Errand of Mercy: The Evangelical United Front, 1790– 1837 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960); Charles C. Cole Jr., The Social Ideas of the Northern Evangelists, 1826–1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 954); and Clifford Griffin’s article, “Religious Benevolence as Social Control, 181 5–1 860,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 44 (December 1 957): 423–44, and his book, Their Brothers’ Keeper: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800–1865 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1 960); Herbert Gutman, Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American Working-Class and Social History (New York: Knopf, 1 976); and British historian E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966). The most powerful and direct argument against the social control school, still, is Lois Banner’s “Religious Benevolence as Social Control: A Critique of an Interpretation,” Journal of American History 60, no. 1 (1 973): 23–41. For other critiques see Lawrence Kohl, “The Concept of Social Control and the History of Jacksonian America,” Journal of the Early Republic 5 (1 985): 21 –34; William Murashin, “The Social Control Theory in American History: A Critique,” Journal of Social History 9 (Summer 1 976): 559–69; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York City Mission Movement, 1812–1870 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971); and Daniel Walker Howe, “The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North during the Second Party System,” Journal of American History 77, no. 4 (1 991 ): 1 216–39. 1 8. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1 989), 3, 1 7; MacIntyre, After Virtue, 34. 1 9. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 78. 20. Ibid., 3, 9. 21 . Ibid., 9. 22. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 28. 23. Ibid., 23. 24. Ibid., 28. 25. Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, 4th ed. (1 841 ; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1 854), iv (originally published in 1837).

chapter one 1 . Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, 4th ed. (1 841; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1 854), 1 5 (originally published in 1 837). 2. For example, see Calvin Colton, Public Economy for the United States (New York: Barnes, 1 848). 3. Paul K. Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity: America’s First Political Economists (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), ix. 4. Michael J. L. O’Connor, Origins of Academic Economics in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 944), 1 . 5. Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 309. See also Gladys Bryson, “The Emergence of the Social Sciences from Moral Philosophy,” International Journal of Ethics 42 (April 1932): 304–23; and Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606–1865, vol. 2 (New York: Viking Press, 1946). 6. Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr., “Introduction,” and Thomas Sowell, “Adam Smith in Theory and Practice,” in Adam Smith and Modern Political Economy, Bicentennial Essays on the Wealth of Nation, ed. Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1 979), ix, 3. 7. H. J. Laski, The Rise of European Liberalism (New York: Harper, 1936), 1 9, quoted in Eric Roll, A History of Economic Thought, 5th ed. (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1 992), 73.

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8. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1 975), 263. 9. For more on Smith’s scheme and its place in the train of European thought, see Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977), especially his subchapter, “Adam Smith and the End of a Vision,” 1 00–1 3. 1 0. There is a good bit of debate over the timing of Wealth of Nations in relation to the Industrial Revolution. Did Smith merely describe and in some ways apologize for the economic processes he witnessed around him, or did he predate the full-blown Industrial Revolution and accurately predict both its good fruit as well as some of its excesses? The historical evidence and the opinions of most scholars seem to suggest that Smith wrote at a time when there existed a primitive division of labor and a more developed free-trade market within the British Empire, but not widespread industrialization. Peter Mathias, for one, argues this point in his study, The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1914, 2nd ed. (London: Methuen, 1 983), 1 6. Similarly, E. P. Thompson, whose The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966) is an extended investigation of the effects of the Industrial Revolution on England’s poor, limits his work to the period 1 780 to 1 832—again, a few years after the publication of Wealth of Nations—and spends most of his time on the years of intense industrialization after Waterloo. See also Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (New York: Vintage Books, 1 985), 44. 1 1 . For more on the Union of 1 707 and the development of a Scottish commercial or civil society, see David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1 990); Marvin B. Becker, The Emergence of Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century: A Privileged Moment in the History of England, Scotland, and France (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1 994); and Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 983). 1 2. Mathias, First Industrial Nation, 34. 13. Gary Langer, The Coming of Age of Political Economy, 1815–1825, Contributions in Economic History, Number 72 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1 987), 2–3. The phrase political economy first appeared in 1 61 5 in Antoyne de Montchretien’s Traicte de l’oeconomie politique and was brought to England later that century in the works of William Petty (1 623–1687), the country’s first real economic theorist. The term gained more widespread circulation over eighty years later with the publication of Sir James Steuart’s Principles of Political Economy in 1 767, but it was still Adam Smith who, as Gertrude Himmelfarb writes, “for good or for ill . . . heralded the beginning of ‘political economy’ as that term was generally understood at the time—‘classical economics,’ as a later generation was to know it.” Himmelfarb, Idea of Poverty, 42–46. Not too many scholars challenge Smith’s title as the father of modern economic thought. Eric Roll, for example, devotes only three chapters to the millennia of thinking before Smith (compared to ten after him), going back to the economic ideas of the Old Testament, Plato, and Aristotle, up to the mercantilists and the Physiocrats. Roll, History of Economic Thought. Other textbooks on economic history that seek to be all-encompassing do the same. See, for example, Harry Landreth and David C. Colander, History of Economic Thought, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1 994); and Henry William Spiegel, The Growth of Economic Thought, rev. and expanded ed. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1 983), 94–220. 1 4. Ellen Frankel Paul, Moral Revolution and Economic Science: The Demise of Laissez-Faire in Nineteenth-Century British Political Economy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 9; Himmelfarb, Idea of Poverty, 42–45. 1 5. Langer, Coming of Age, 3. 1 6. Spiegel, Growth of Economic Thought, 286. 17. Langer, Coming of Age, 2–3.

notes to pages 26–28

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1 8. David Brion Davis makes this same point about the success of the abolitionist movement in Britain. He argues that abolitionist leaders received widespread popular support only after they had silenced some of their more radical voices and successfully presented their cause as one that would preserve order rather than destroy it. Eschewing a more cynical interpretation of abolitionism’s success, Davis writes: “The new hostility to human bondage cannot be reduced simply to the needs and interests of particular classes. Yet the needs and interests of particular classes had much to do with a given society’s receptivity to new ideas and thus to the ideas’ historical impact.” Problem of Slavery, 49 (emphasis mine). The doctrines of political economy and those of abolitionism were successfully received for similar reasons, but they differed greatly in their origins. While abolitionism was born out of radical Christian theology, the origins of political economy were more areligious and, as has been argued here, religiously problematic. 1 9. Thomas Sowell, “Adam Smith in Theory and Practice,” in Adam Smith and Modern Political Economy, Bicentennial Essays on the Wealth of Nation, ed. Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1 979), 3. 20. Langer, Coming of Age, 1 –2. 21. Recent arguments for Smith as a religious believer remain unconvincing. Jerry Evensky, for example, who takes “Smith’s faith as a given,” admits that his “account of Smith’s personal relationship to religion is the most speculative part of my presentation.” Evensky bases his argument that Smith might have “maintained a faith in the deity” on his upbringing in “old Calvinist traditions” and “the same Hutchensonian soil as the Moderate literati.” He does not seem to entertain the idea that Smith might have simply rejected his religious background, either decisively or gradually, as his thoughts developed. Jerry Evensky, “Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy: The Role of Religion and Its Relationship to Philosophy and Ethics in the Evolution of Society,” History of Political Economy 30 (Spring 1 998): 19, 39. Similarly, Lisa Hill builds on Jacob Viner’s seminal yet iconoclastic book The Role of Providence in the Social Order (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1 972). Viner speaks of the “secret” and Hill the “hidden” natural theology of Smith in The Wealth of Nations. But as these adjectives indicate, any kind of theological underpinning for Smith’s work is cryptic at best. As Hill admits: “It should be noted at the outset that Smith’s natural theology is opaque and quite difficult to penetrate without some determined textual effort. . . . Smith seems to have been deliberately evasive about his precise personal convictions.” “The Hidden Theology of Adam Smith,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 8 (Spring 2001 ): 4. 22. John McVickar, Review of On Political Economy, by Thomas Chalmers, Churchman, November 1 0, 1 832, 342. 23. Samuel Fleischacker, On Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 71 –72 (emphasis in the original). 24. Emma Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001 ), 1 29. 25. John Dunn, “From Applied Theology to Social Analysis: The Break between John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment,” in Wealth and Virtue, ed. Hont and Ignatieff, 1 34. 26. Rothschild, Economic Sentiments, 1 30, 301 . 27. To use Rothschild’s words, “the secularization of natural philosophy . . . was at the center of Hume’s and Smith’s understanding of natural law.” Ibid., 130. 28. David Gauthier, “Why Ought One Obey God? Reflections on Hobbes and Locke,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1 977): 435, quoted in Dunn, “From Applied Theology,” 1 1 9. 29. Dunn, “From Applied Theology,” 1 31 ; Rothschild, Economic Sentiments, 1 30. 30. Rothschild, Economic Sentiments, 1 1 6, 135. For more context, see her entire chapter 5, “The Bloody and Invisible Hand.” 31. Ibid., 1 35. 32. Ibid., 1 30.

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33. Dunn, “From Applied Theology,” 1 1 9. 34. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 235–36, quoted in Rothschild, Economic Sentiments, 299–300, n. 79. 35. For the views expressed here about “das Adam Smith Problem,” I am deeply indebted to three excellent recent articles: Leonidas Montes, “Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins, the Stages of the Current Debate, and One Implication for Our Understanding of Sympathy,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 25 (2003): 63–90; Spencer J. Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues: A Partial Resolution of the Adam Smith Problem,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 1 9 (1 997): 1 27–40; and Amos Witztum, “A Study into Smith’s Conception of the Human Character: Das Adam Smith Problem Revisited,” History of Political Economy 30 (1 998): 489–51 3. 36. See Himmelfarb, Idea of Poverty, esp. chap. 2, “Adam Smith: Political Economy as Moral Philosophy,” 47–49; Sowell, “Adam Smith in Theory and Practice”; and Joseph Cropsey, “The Invisible Hand: Moral and Political Considerations,” in Adam Smith and Modern Political Economy, ed. O’Driscoll, 3–1 8, 1 65–76. See also David D. Raphael and Alec A. Macfie, introduction to Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Raphael and Macfie, 20; Terrence W. Hutchison, “The Bicentenary of Adam Smith,” Economic Journal 86 (September 1 876): 482; Andrew S. Skinner, “Adam Smith: The Development of a System,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 23, no. 2 (1976): 1 1 2; Horst C. Recktenwald, “An Adam Smith Renaissance anno 1 976? The Bicentenary Output—A Reappraisal of His Scholarship,” Journal of Economic Literature 1 6, no. 1 (1978): 66; Donald Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 1 0; and Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 981), 197, n. 1 9, quoted in Montes, “Das Adam Smith Problem,” 78–79. 37. Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues,” 1 27, 137–38. 38. Witztum, “Das Adam Smith Problem Revisited,” 490. 39. James R. Otteson, “The Recurring ‘Adam Smith Problem,’” History of Philosophy Quarterly 17, no. 1 (2000): 70, quoted in Montes, “Das Adam Smith Problem,” 82. 40. For even more on “das Adam Smith Problem,” see Vivienne Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce, and Conscience (London: Routledge, 1 994); Laurence Dickey, “Historicizing the ‘Adam Smith Problem’: Conceptual, Historiographical, and Textual Issues,” Journal of Modern History 58 (1 986): 579–609; Charles Griswold Jr., Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1 999); Elias L. Khalil, “Beyond Self-Interest and Altruism: A Reconstruction of Adam Smith’s Theory of Human Conduct,” Economics and Philosophy 6 (1 990): 255–73; Robert B. Lamb, “Adam Smith’s System: Sympathy Not Self-Interest,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1 974): 671 –82; David M. Levy, How the Dismal Science Got Its Name: Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001); Glenn R. Morrow, The Ethical and Economic Theories of Adam Smith (New York: Longmans, Green, 1 923; New York: Kelley, 1 969); Russell Nieli, “Spheres of Intimacy and the Adam Smith Problem,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1 986): 61 1 –24; Spencer J. Pack, Capitalism as a Moral System: Adam Smith’s Critique of the Free Market Economy (Aldershot, UK: Elgar, 1 991 ); Amartya K. Sen, On Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1 987); Richard F. Teichgraeber III, “Rethinking Das Adam Smith Problem,” Journal of British Studies 20 (1 981 ): 106–23; Jeffrey T. Young, Economics as a Moral Science: The Political Economy of Adam Smith (Cheltenham, UK: Elgar, 1997). 41. Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues,” 134–35. 42. E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York: New Press, 1 991 ), 201, quoted in Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues,” 1 31. 43. Witztum, “Das Adam Smith Problem Revisited,” 492, 493. 44. Montes, “Das Adam Smith Problem,” 66, 82–85; Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues,” 132– 34; Witztum, “Das Adam Smith Problem Revisited,” 490–93, 51 0–1 1 ; and Morrow, Ethical and Economic Theories, cited in Montes, “Das Adam Smith Problem,” 77.

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45. Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues,” 1 28, 137. 46. The poem is Blake’s “And Did Those Feet,” in Norton Anthology of English Literature, 5th ed., ed. M. H. Abrams (New York: Norton, 1 986), 2:77–78. 47. See Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, eds. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1 981), 782, 785, 788. 48. Spiegel, Growth of Economic Thought, 324–26; Landreth and Colander, History of Economic Thought, 1 06–12; Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, 3rd ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 86–95. 49. Spiegel, Growth of Economic Thought, 271 –75; Heilbroner, Worldly Philosophers, 80–86. 50. Heilbroner, for example, describes Malthus’s theory as “not so much a hardhearted as a supremely logical one.” Worldly Philosophers, 76 (emphasis in the original). 51 . Robert Southey, “Inquiry into the Poor Laws,” Quarterly Review 8 (December 1 81 2): 337, quoted in Langer, Coming of Age, 5. 52. Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets (February 1 , 1850), and Works, vol. 1 3 (New York: Scribner, 1 897), 301 , quoted in Himmelfarb, Idea of Poverty, 133. 53. Thomas Carlyle, “Signs of the Times” (1 829), in Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: Collected and Republished, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (1 840), 270, cited in Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1 988), 36–37. 54. John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (1 876), in The Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, vol. 28 (London: Allen, 1 907), 51 6, 764, quoted in Himmelfarb, Idea of Poverty, 42. Himmelfarb adds that “Byron, Shelley, Hazlitt, Cobbett, Carlyle, Dickens, Disraeli, and scores of others . . . made of Malthus, as his first major biographer said, the ‘best abused man of his age.’” Idea of Poverty, 1 24, citing James Bonar, Malthus and His Work (New York: Macmillan, 1 924), 1 (originally published in 1885).

chapter two 1 . John McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, Being a Republication of the Article Upon that Subject Contained in the Edinburgh Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Together with Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Summary of the Science (New York: Wilder and Campbell, 1 825), 1 86. 2. John McVickar, Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy: Recently Delivered at Columbia College, New York (London, 1830), 34 (emphasis in the original) (first published in 1 830 in the American free-trade organ, Banner of the Constitution). 3. Henry Vethake, The Principles of Political Economy (Philadelphia: Nicklin and Johnson, 1 838), 406. 4. Alonzo Potter, Political Economy, Its Objects, Uses, and Principles Considered with Reference to the Condition of the American People (New York, 1 840), 26 (emphasis in the original); Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, 4th ed. (1841 ; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1854), 1 5 (originally published in 1 837). 5. Francis Bowen, The Principles of Political Economy Applied to the Conditions, the Resources, and the Institutions of the American People, 4th ed. (Boston, 1 856), 27, quoted in Mark A. Noll, “Protestant Reasoning about Money and the Economy, 1 790–1869: A Preliminary Probe,” in God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790–1860, ed. Mark A. Noll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 275. 6. Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York: Harper, 1 949), 1 4. Similarly, Michael J. L. O’Connor writes: “These clerics were by no means the American pioneers in the use of political economy as subject matter. . . . Still less were these ministers the leading group of political economists in the America of their time. . . . Nevertheless, the clerical school

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exerted probably the greatest long-term academic influence.” Origins of Academic Economics in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 944), 3. Joseph Dorfman, another leading authority on early political economy, does not employ the phrase “the clerical school” in the same way that May and O’Connor do, but he does devote a chapter to “The School of Wayland,” which was in many ways synonymous with the clerical school. See The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606–1865 (New York: Viking Press, 1 946), 2:758–70. 7. D. H. Meyer, The Instructed Conscience: The Shaping of the American National Ethic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1 972), 1 3–1 4; Paul K. Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity: America’s First Political Economists (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1 980), 1 1 6. 8. O’Connor, Origins of Academic Economics, 1 74–76. 9. Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 1 06–7; Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 979), 270. 1 0. Guelzo, Redeemer President, 20–21 ; Dorfman, Economic Mind, 761 ; Howe, American Whigs, 9, 21 . 1 1 . Howe, American Whigs, 28. See also the chapter “Theistic Common Sense,” in Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 93–1 1 3. 1 2. James Turner, “Secularization and Sacralization: Speculations on Some Religious Origins of the Secular Humanities Curriculum, 1850–1 900,” and D. G. Hart, “American Learning and the Problem of Religious Studies,” in The Secularization of the Academy, ed. George M. Marsden and Bradley J. Longfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 992), 75, 1 99. For more on the antebellum discipline of moral philosophy, see D. H. Meyer, The Instructed Conscience: The Shaping of the American National Ethic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press); and the chapter “The New Queen of the Sciences and the New Republic,” in George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 994), 48–67. 1 3. Meyer, Instructed Conscience, 13; Dorfman, Economic Mind, 758–59; Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 1 1 6–1 7. 1 4. Francis Wayland and H. L. Wayland, A Memoir of the Life and Labors of Francis Wayland, D.D., LL.D., Late President of Brown University, Including Selections from His Personal Reminiscences and Correspondence (New York: Sheldon, 1 867), 1:54. 1 5. Francis Wayland, Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System in the United States (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1 842), 1 44. 16. Francis Wayland, Report to the Corporation of Brown University, on Changes in the System of Collegiate Education, Read March 28, 1850 (Providence, RI: Whitney, 1 850), 18, 21 . 1 7. Ibid., 34. 1 8. Theodore R. Crane, “Francis Wayland: Political Economist as Educator,” Brown University Papers 39 (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1 962), 41 . 1 9. Wayland and Wayland, A Memoir, 2:1 45. 20. Crane, “Francis Wayland.” 21 . For more on the debate as to whether John McVickar of Columbia or Thomas Cooper of the University of South Carolina was the first American political economist, see Michael O’Connor, Origins of Academic Economics in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), 9–1 8; Elbert V. Wills, “John McVickar, Economist and Old-Time College Teacher,” Education 52 (October 1 931 ): 1 08–13, and (November 1 931 ): 132–40; Elbert V. Wills, “Political Economy in the Early American College Curriculum,” South Atlantic Quarterly 24, no. 2 (1925): 1 31 –53; Joseph Dorfman and Rexford Guy Tugwell, “The Reverend John McVickar,” Columbia University Quarterly 23, no. 4 (1931 ): 353–401 ; Edwin R. A. Seligman, “The Development of Economic Thought in America,” Economic Forum 1 , no. 4 (1 933): 345–52; Edwin R. A. Seligman, “The Early

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Teaching of Economics in the United States,” in Economic Essays, Contributed in Honor of John Bates Clark, ed. J. H. Hollander (New York: Macmillan, 1 927); Edwin R. A. Seligman, “McVickar’s Professorship of Political Economy,” Columbia Alumni News 1 9, no. 27 (1 928): 4; Edwin R. A. Seligman, “Teaching of Economics in the American Universities,” in A Cyclopedia of Education, ed. Paul Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1 91 1 ), 2:388–91 ; and Gladys Bryson, “The Emergence of the Social Sciences from Moral Philosophy,” International Journal of Ethics 42 (April, 1 932): 304– 23. 22. John McVickar, “Thoughts on Closing This Account Book of Fifteen Years, February 3, 1 845,” in William Augustus McVickar, The Life of the Reverend John McVickar, S.T.D. (New York, 1 872), 31 2. 23. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 51 6–20, 71 3–20. McVickar’s post-1837 articles on banks include “Tucker’s Theory of Money and Banks,” New York Review 5 (October 1 839): 334–48; “American Finances and Credit,” New York Review 7 ( July 1 840): 1 86–208; and “A National Bank, Its Necessity and Most Advisable Form,” New York Review 8 (April 1 841 ): 409–41 . 24. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 826–27; O’Connor, Origins of Academic Economics, 204–5. 25. O’Connor, Origins of Academic Economics, 208. 26. Alonzo Potter, “Trades Unions,” New York Review 2 ( January 1 838): 36. 27. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 741 –43. 28. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 731 ; Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 1 23–24; Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Vethake, Henry.” 29. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 835–36. 30. Ibid. 31. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 837–44; Meyer, The Instructed Conscience, 1 8–1 9. 32. O’Connor, Origins of Academic Economics, 3. 33. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 705–6. 34. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 777–79; Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 188–99. 35. Dorfman, Economic Mind, 865–80.

chapter three 1 . For many of the ideas and themes expressed in this chapter, I am indebted to Henry F. May’s two excellent books: Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York: Harper and Row, 1 967), originally published in 1 949; and The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1 976). The former is divided into four parts, the first of which he entitled “The Conservative Mold, 1828–1861 ,” and the first chapter within it “The Battle with Radicalism.” I have therefore borrowed his terminology of “conservative” versus “radical,” which I believe to be a broad but accurate way to describe this ideological conflict in which the clerical economists participated. What I aim to do in this project, though, is go deeper than May into the specific and important subject of religion and economics in the antebellum era by investigating more fully some of the sources that he only touched on. Also, as much as I admire his work, I believe that his relatively minimal treatment of Adam Smith’s legacy in The Enlightenment in America is an unfortunate oversight. I also believe, as is explained below, that he misjudges the clerical economists. Although I have borrowed his terminology of “conservative” versus “radical,” I think that he attributes too much of the clerical economists’ conservatism to class and political (that is, Whiggish) anxieties about Jacksonian radicalism. I, on the other hand, want to emphasize their more religious and republican anxieties that I believe arose out of some of their higher priorities and more deeply held commitments. 2. “Needs,” in fact, is one of O’Connor’s and May’s most oft-used and central concepts. O’Connor, for example, articulates well the very same question addressed in this chapter: “What

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processes within the realm of the academic culture in the Northeast, facilitated the final acceptance of the subject of political economy in the period roughly between 1 81 7 and 1825?” “This question,” he continues, “is treated in terms of the needs of the social groups controlling education there.” O’Connor also begins a subchapter entitled “Needs of the Northeastern Colleges in the Early Nineteenth Century,” with the sentence: “The social controls related to the colleges of the Northeast faced a series of challenges during the early nineteenth century, and these challenges created problems and needs.” Michael J. L. O’Connor, Origins of Academic Economics in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 944), 5, 68 (emphases mine). 3. O’Connor, Origins, 1 09–1 0. 4. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America, 13 (emphases mine). 5. O’Connor, Origins, 76. 6. D. H. Meyer, The Instructed Conscience: The Shaping of the American National Ethic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1 972), 99–1 07. 7. See, for example, Alonzo Potter, Political Economy, Its Objects, Uses, and Principles Considered with Reference to the Condition of the American People (New York, 1 840), 33; John McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, Being a Republication of the Article upon That Subject Contained in the Edinburgh Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Together with Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Summary of the Science (New York: Wilder and Campbell, 1 825), 68n. 8. Potter, Political Economy, 1 7, 80; Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, 4th ed. (1 841; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1 854), 76 (originally published in 1 837). John McVickar and Francis Wayland also retold Smith’s anecdote about “a little boy who many years ago made one of the greatest improvements in the steam engine; for having nothing to do but to open and shut a valve at a particular motion of the engine, he observed that by tying two strings to particular parts of the machine it would open and shut itself: he did so, and thus all further trouble was saved.” John McVickar, First Lessons in Political Economy (Boston, 1 835), 1 3–1 4. Compare to Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1 981), 20 (originally published in 1776); and Wayland, Elements of Political Economy, 79. 9. For more on the clerical economists’ debt to David Ricardo, see Paul Conkin’s chapter “Ricardo Domesticated,” in Prophets of Prosperity: America’s First Political Economists (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1 980), 1 1 1 –34. 1 0. David Gauthier, “Why Ought One Obey God? Reflections on Hobbes and Locke,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 7 (1 977): 435, quoted in John Dunn, “From Applied Theology to Social Analysis: The Break between John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment,” in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1 1 9. 1 1 . For examples, see Lisa Hill, “The Hidden Theology of Adam Smith,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 8 (Spring 2001 ): 1–29; James E. Alvey, “The Secret, Natural Theological Foundation of Adam Smith’s Work,” Journal of Markets and Morality 7 (2004): 335– 62; Jacob Viner, The Role of Providence in the Social Order (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1 972), 81–82; and Jerry Evensky, “Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy: The Role of Religion and Its Relationship to Philosophy and Ethics in the Evolution of Society,” History of Political Economy 30 (Spring 1 998): 1 7–42 1 2. For more on this, see George Marsden, “The Collapse of American Evangelical Academia,” in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1 983), 219–64. 1 3. For more on the tortured and begrudged career of utilitarianism in nineteenth-century America, see Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence (New York: Basic Books, 1 987), 1 7–44. 14. Potter, Political Economy, 33.

notes to pages 54–62

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1 5. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1 3–1 5. 1 6. Ibid. 1 7. Ibid., 376–80. 1 8. Ibid., 380. 1 9. Ibid., 248, 25, 456. 20. Ibid., 26, 248. 21 . Wayland, Elements of Political Economy, 92. 22. Ibid., 75–76. 23. Lyman Atwater, review of The Bible in the Counting House, by Henry A. Boardman, Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 25 ( July 1 853): 393–94. For even more examples of the way in which the clerical economists valued civilization as the good end, and the division of labor as the means to reach that end, see Potter, Political Economy, 1 7; and McVickar, First Lessons in Political Economy, 1 3. 24. Smith, Wealth of Nations, 22. 25. Wayland, Elements of Political Economy, 59–60. 26. Francis Lieber, Some Truths Worth Remembering, Given as a Recapitulation, in a Farewell Lecture to the Class of Political Economy of 1849 (published by the class), 1 –2. This short, six-page lecture is a wonderful “recapitulation,” as he puts it, of what Lieber believed to be political economy’s most important axioms. Almost all of the assumptions that the clerical economists made, the debates they engaged in, and the conclusions they came to are listed here in a pithy bullet-point-like outline.

chapter four 1 . John McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, Being a Republication of the Article upon That Subject Contained in the Edinburgh Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Together with Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Summary of the Science (New York: Wilder and Campbell, 1 825), 1 60n. As the title of this piece suggests, the main body of this 1825 text was a reprint of John Ramsay McCulloch’s 1 824 work, Discourse of the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects, and Importance of Political Economy. McVickar meant to disseminate in America McCulloch’s ideas, which were themselves a popularized form of David Ricardo’s economics. Unless otherwise noted, when citing this particular work I mean to quote McVickar’s words, which are found in the footnotes and summary, and not McCulloch’s, which comprise the main text. 2. Henry Vethake, An Introductory Lecture on Political Economy, delivered at Nassau Hall, January 31, 1831 (Princeton, NJ, 1 831 ), 26. 3. Francis Lieber, Some Truths Worth Remembering, Given as a Recapitulation, in a Farewell Lecture to the Class of Political Economy of 1849 (published by the class), 2. 4. Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy (1 841 ; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1 854), iv (emphasis in the original) (originally published in 1 837). 5. See Jerry Evensky, “Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy: The Role of Religion and Its Relationship to Philosophy and Ethics in the Evolution of Society,” History of Political Economy 30 (1998): 1 7–42. 6. Wayland, Elements of Political Economy, 1 5. 7. Ibid., 1 5, 90. 8. Henry Vethake, The Principles of Political Economy (Philadelphia: Nicklin and Johnson, 1 838), 14. 9. McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, 160. 1 0. “Carey’s Political Economy,” North American Review, July 1 838, 73. 1 1 . The Scottish political economist John McCulloch wrote that “in 1 776, our illustrious countryman Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations—a work which has done for Political Economy

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what the Principia of Newton did for Physics, and the Esprit des Loix of Montesquieu for Politics. In this work the science was, for the first time, treated in its fullest extent, and many of its fundamental principles placed beyond the reach of cavil and dispute.” From McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, 41 . 1 2. Francis Bowen, “Wayland’s Political Economy,” Christian Examiner 24 (March 1 838): 50. 1 3. “Carey’s Political Economy,” 89. 14. Jonathan Wainwright, Inequality of Individual Wealth the Ordinance of Providence, and Essential to Civilization: A Sermon Preached before His Excellency, John Davis, Governor, His Honor Samuel T. Armstrong, Lt. Governor, the Honorable Council and the Legislature of Massachusetts, on the Annual Election, January 7, 1835 (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1 835), Appendix B, 59; Bowen, “Wayland’s Political Economy, 49. 1 5. “Carey’s Political Economy,” 90. 1 6. Vethake, Introductory Lecture, 1 4, 26. 1 7. Ibid., 1 7–20. 1 8. Vethake, Principles of Political Economy, 343–45 (emphasis in the original). 1 9. Ibid. 20. John McVickar, review of On Political Economy, by Thomas Chalmers, Churchman, November 1 0, 1 832, 432. 21 . John McVickar, “Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy Recently Delivering at Columbia College, New York,” Banner of the Constitution, April 17, 1 830, 273. 22. McVickar, “Review,” 432. 23. Vethake, Principles of Political Economy, 343–45. 24. Francis Wayland, “Encouragements to Religious Effort: A Discourse Delivered in Philadelphia, at the Request of the American Sunday School Union, May 25, 1 830,” in Occasional Discourses (Boston, 1833), 1 45–46. 25. Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 155. 26. John Lalor, Money and Morals: A Book for the Times (London: Chapman, 1 852), vii, quoted in Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1 988), 56. 27. Thomas Chalmers, The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns (New York: Scribner, 1 900), 81 (first published in 1 823). 28. Mark A. Noll, “Thomas Chalmers (1 780–1847) in North America (ca. 1 830–1 91 7),” Church History 66, no. 4 (1997), 762–66; Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1785–1865 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1 988), 55–63. 29. McVickar, “Review,” 432. 30. Noll, “Thomas Chalmers,” 776–77. 31 . Francis Wayland, Memoir of the Christian Labors, Pastoral and Philanthropic, of Thomas Chalmers (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1 864). 32. Hilton, Age of Atonement, 39.

chapter five 1 . John McVickar, review of On Political Economy, by Thomas Chalmers, Churchman, November 1 0, 1 832, 342. 2. Henry Vethake, An Introductory Lecture on Political Economy, delivered at Nassau Hall, January 31, 1 831 (Princeton, NJ, 1 831 ), 3–4. 3. Francis Bowen, review of The Elements of Moral Science, by Francis Wayland, Christian Examiner 22 (1 837): 365–66, quoted in D. H. Meyer, The Instructed Conscience: The Shaping of the American National Ethic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 10.

notes to pages 74–90

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4. Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence (New York: Basic Books, 1 987), 38, 1 9. 5. David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 21 1 ; Elie Hal´ evy, A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century, trans. E. I. Watkin and D. A. Barker (1 924–47), 586–87, both quoted in Hilton, Age of Atonement, 245, 32. 6. Hilton, Age of Atonement, 245. 7. Ibid., 245, 33 (emphases in the original). 8. Henry Vethake, The Principles of Political Economy (Philadelphia: Nicklin and Johnson, 1 838), 1 4 (emphasis in the original). 9. Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy (1 841 ; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1 854), 365–67 (originally published in 1 837). 1 0. Wayland, Elements of Political Economy, 383 (emphases in the original). 1 1 . Ibid., 90. 1 2. Wayland, Elements of Political Economy, 90–91. 1 3. Francis Lieber, Some Truths Worth Remembering, Given as a Recapitulation, in a Farewell Lecture to the Class of Political Economy of 1849 (published by the class), 6. 1 4. Lieber, Some Truths Worth Remembering, 5. 1 5. John McVickar, First Lessons in Political Economy (Boston, 1 835), 23. In this volume, unlike his other textbook, Outlines of Political Economy (1825), all of the words are McVickar’s and not an annotated republication of an earlier text. It is also worth mentioning that, as the title suggests, McVickar intended this work to be a primer in political economy for instruction in elementary schools. First Lessons is therefore an exceptionally concise catalog of the clerical economists’ most basic principles, goals, and assumptions as McVickar tried to reduce them to their essence and articulate them as succinctly as possible. 16. Hilton, Age of Atonement, 245. 17. McVickar, First Lessons, 23–25. 1 8. John McVickar, “Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy: Recently Delivered at Columbia College, New York,” Banner of the Constitution 1 , no. 35 (1 830): 273. For an intellectual historian’s interpretation of political economy’s promise to deliver world peace, see Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1 977). 1 9. Wayland, Elements of Political Economy, 91 (emphasis mine). 20. Lieber, Some Truths Worth Remembering, 5; Vethake, Principles of Political Economy, 406. 21. McVickar, “Introductory Lecture,” 273. 22. McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, 1 88. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid.

chapter six 1 . Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy (1 841 ; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1 854), 383 (emphases in the original) (originally published in 1 837). 2. Henry Vethake, An Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy, delivered at Nassau Hall, January 31, 1831 (Princeton, NJ, 1 831 ), 4, 3. 3. Ibid., 8–9; Alonzo Potter, review of Principles of Political Economy, by Henry Carey, New York Review 3 ( July 1838): 1 8. 4. Vethake, Introductory Lecture, 8. 5. Potter, “Review,” 1 8; Vethake, Introductory Lecture, 9. 6. John McVickar, “Concluding Remarks” in Outlines of Political Economy, Being a Republication of the Article upon That Subject Contained in the Edinburgh Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica

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notes to pages 90–103

Together with Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Summary of the Science (New York: Wilder and Campbell, 1 825), 1 87–88. 7. John McVickar, “Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy: Recently Delivered at Columbia College, New York,” Banner of the Constitution, April 17, 1 830, 274. 8. McVickar “Concluding Remarks,” 1 87–88. 9. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Scribner, 1 952), 53. 1 0. Wayland, Elements of Political Economy, 1 31 . 1 1 . Potter, “Review,” 19. 1 2. McVickar, “Introductory Lecture,” 273. 1 3. Ibid. 1 4. Spencer Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues: A Partial Resolution of the Adam Smith Problem,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 1 9 (1 997): 1 33. 1 5. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1958), 52. Chapter 4, which is almost one-third of the text, is entitled “The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism.” 1 6. McVickar, “Introductory Lecture,” 273. 1 7. Ibid. 1 8. McVickar, “Concluding Remarks,” 1 87. 1 9. McVickar, “Introductory Lecture,” 273.

chapter seven 1 . John McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, Being a Republication of the Article upon That Subject Contained in the Edinburgh Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Together with Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Summary of the Science (New York: Wilder and Campbell, 1 825), 1 29, 1 45. 2. Henry Vethake, The Principles of Political Economy (Philadelphia: Nicklin and Johnson, 1 838), 1 00. 3. McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, 1 49. 4. Ibid., 1 29, 1 1 9. 5. John McVickar, review of On Political Economy, by Thomas Chalmers, Churchman, November 1 0, 1832, 343; Francis Lieber, Essays on Property and Labour as Connected with Natural Law and the Constitution of Society (New York, 1841 ), 1 94; Francis Wayland, “Encouragements to Religious Effort: A Discourse Delivered in Philadelphia, at the Request of the American Sunday School Union, May 25, 1 830,” in Occasional Discourses Including Several Never Before Published (Boston, 1 833), 1 43. 6. Vethake, Principles of Political Economy, 101 –2, 1 1 0 (emphasis in the original). 7. In his chapter “Ricardo Domesticated,” historian Paul K. Conkin highlights Wayland, Vethake, and McVickar as the three most prominent American Ricardians of the era. Prophets of Prosperity: America’s First Political Economists (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1 980), 1 1 1 –34. 8. Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 1 88. 9. Calvin Colton, Public Economy for the United States (New York: Barnes, 1 848), 27 (emphasis in the original). 1 0. Calvin Colton, The Rights of Labor (New York: Barnes, 1 846), 89. 1 1 . Colton, Public Economy, 1 7, 21, 1 64, 294. 1 2. Conkin, Prophets of Prosperity, 1 92. 1 3. Alonzo Potter, “Trades’ Unions,” New York Review 2 ( January 1838): 27. 1 4. Alonzo Potter, review of Principles of Political Economy, by Henry Carey, New York Review 3 ( July 1838): 3.

notes to pages 103–112

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1 5. Francis Wayland, A Discourse Delivered in the First Baptist Church, Providence, R.I. on the Day of Public Thanksgiving, July 21, 1842, 2nd ed. (Providence, RI: Brown, 1 842), 1 1 . 1 6. Wayland, “Encouragements to Religious Effort,” 1 56. 1 7. Lieber, Essays on Property and Labour, 207. Alonzo Potter, incidentally, wrote the introduction to Lieber’s text. 1 8. Potter, “Trades’ Unions,” 9 (emphasis in the original). 1 9. Francis Bowen, “Mill’s Political Economy,” North American Review 67 (October 1 848): 41 1 . 20. Colton, Public Economy, 290 (emphasis mine). 21 . Lieber, Essays on Property and Labour, 209–10.

chapter eight 1 . Biographical information on Colwell is unfortunately thin. The best sources out there are still Henry C. Carey, “A Memoir of Stephen Colwell: Read before the American Philosophical Society, Friday, November 1 7, 1 871 ,” reprinted in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 1 7 (1 871 –72): 1 95–209; Broadus Mitchell, “Stephen Colwell,” in Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (New York: Scribner, 1 930), 4:327; Bruce Morgan, “Stephen Colwell: Social Prophet before the Social Gospel,” in Sons of the Prophets: Leaders in Protestantism from Princeton Seminary, ed. Hugh T. Kerr (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1 963), 1 23– 47; and Milton C. Sernett, “Stephen Colwell and the ‘New Themes’ Controversy” (unpublished research paper, University of Delaware, 1 969, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia). 2. Some of Colwell’s titles include “Memorial to the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress Assembled,” in Documents Relating to the Manufacture of Iron in Pennsylvania, Published on Behalf of the Convention of Iron Masters, Met in Philadelphia on the Twentieth of December, 1849 (Philadelphia: General Committee of Iron Masters, 1 850); The Ways and Means of Payment: A Full Analysis of the Credit System with Its Various Modes of Adjustment (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1 859); “Money, the Credit System, and Payments,” Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review 1 7, no. 6 (1 860): 684–97; and Jonathan B. Wise (pseudonym), The Relative Position in Our Industry of Foreign Commerce, Domestic Production, and Internal Trade (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1 850). 3. Colwell traveled with his family and visited England, Sweden, France, and Belgium. The exact dates of the trip are not known, but it must have occurred sometime after his second marriage and before 1 836, when he started running his father-in-law’s iron manufactory. Sernett, “Stephen Colwell,” 1 4, 20. 4. “The Poor and the Poor Laws of Great Britain,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 1 3, no. 1 (1 841 ): 99–1 31 ; “M’Culloch’s British Empire,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 13, no. 3 (1 841 ): 41 6–50; “The Smithsonian Bequest,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 14, no. 2 (1 842): 359–407; and “Sweden, Its Poor Laws and Their Bearing on Society,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 1 5, no. 1 (1 843): 1 42–63. 5. Colwell, “The Smithsonian Bequest,” 386–87, 390. 6. Colwell, “M’Culloch’s British Empire,” 441 , 434; “The Poor and the Poor Laws,” 1 08–9, 1 1 5–1 7, 107. 7. Colwell, “The Smithsonian Bequest,” 390; “M’Culloch’s British Empire,” 427; “The Smithsonian Bequest,” 386–87. 8. London Herald 1 3, no. 3, quoted in Colwell, “M’Culloch’s British Empire,” 428n; Colwell, “Smithsonian Bequest,” 388. Colwell also pleaded: “Let it not be, that when our posterity shall look back to the time when their forefathers were loudest in their expressions of sympathy for the slaves of the south, they were silently introducing a system of industry which entailed upon those coming after them a bondage more terrible and more incurable.” “The Smithsonian Bequest,” 391. For a lively exchange among modern historians over Britons’ concern to end slavery but general

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neglect of working-class issues, see Thomas Bender, ed., The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 992). 9. Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont, Econ. Pol. Chret. tom II, 2, quoted in Stephen Colwell, “The Last Will and Testament of James Smithson,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 1 5, no. 1 (1 843): 388–89. 10. Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, 2nd ed. (New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1 840), 59. 1 1 . Stephen Colwell, New Themes for the Protestant Clergy: Creeds without Charity, Theology without Humanity, and Protestantism without Christianity (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 851 ), 29. 1 2. Colwell, “The Smithsonian Bequest,” 394–95. 1 3. Ibid. 1 4. Ibid. 1 5. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981 ), 26–27 (originally published in 1 776). 1 6. Colwell, “The Smithsonian Bequest,” 394–95. 1 7. Stephen Colwell, preface to the American Edition of The Race for Riches, and Some of the Pits into Which the Runners Fall: Six Lectures Applying the Word of God to the Traffic of Men, by William Arnot (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 853), ix. 1 8. Samuel Austin Allibone, New Themes Condemned: or Thirty Opinions upon “New Themes,” and Its “Reviewer,” with Answer to 1. “Some Notice of ‘A Review by a Layman,’ 2. “Hints to a Layman,” and 3. “Charity and the Clergy” (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 853), 35, 93, 1 1 4; William Henry Ruffner, Charity and the Clergy: Being a Review by a Protestant Clergyman of the “New Themes” Controversy (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 853), 1 3–1 4. 1 9. Colwell, New Themes, v–vi. 20. Stephen Colwell, Politics for American Christians (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 852), 35; Colwell, New Themes, 46; and Colwell, “Preface,” xii. 21 . Colwell, New Themes, vi–vii, 1 1 . 22. This is a very incomplete and paraphrased list of the scriptural points that Colwell wanted to make. The following is a list of the passages he quoted from the New Testament. It is included to show both how thoroughly Colwell supported his arguments with biblical references and how many proof texts he could draw from that source. This first list comes from the four gospels. Found in New Themes, 1 2–26: Matthew 5.2–1 1 , 21–24, 38–46; 6.1 –4, 1 2, 14, 1 5, 19–21 , 25–34; 7.1–1 2, 21–23; 1 0.1, 7–1 3, 42; 1 8.2–6, 1 5–1 7, 21 –35; 1 9.1 8–21; 22.37–39; 25.31 –46. Mark 9.41 , 42; 1 0.13–27 Luke 6.27–38, 46; 1 0.25–37; 1 4.1 2–24; 1 8.9–1 4; 1 9.8 John 8.3–7, 13.5–1 5, 34, 35; 1 5.1 2, 1 4, 17 These are the passages Colwell cited from Acts and the Epistles. Found in New Themes, 49–57: Acts 2.44, 45; 4.32–35 Romans 1 2.8–1 0, 13–21; 1 3.1 0; 1 4.7, 1 0, 1 3; 1 5.1 , 2, 5, 7 I Corinthians 1 .1 0; 6.7, 8; 1 3.1 –8, 1 3; 1 6.1 4 II Corinthians 8.3, 4 Galatians 2.1 0; 5.1 4, 22; 6.2, 1 0 Ephesians 4.2, 25, 26, 31 , 32 Philippians 2.1 –4

notes to pages 117–125

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Colossians 3.12–1 4 I Thessalonians 4.9; 5.13–1 5 II Thessalonians 3.15 I Timothy 1.5 James 2.8, 1 5, 1 6; 3.1 7; 5.4 I Peter 1 .22; 2.1 7; 3.8–1 0; 4.8–1 0 II Peter 1 .5–7 I John 2.9–1 1 ; 3.1 1 , 1 4, 1 7, 1 8, 23.4:7, 8, 1 1 , 12, 1 6, 20, 21 ; 5.2, 3 23. Colwell, Politics for American Christians, 8. 24. Colwell, New Themes, 240. 25. Ibid., 241 . 26. Ibid., 295. 27. Colwell, Politics for American Christians, 27–28. 28. Colwell, New Themes, 31 4. 29. Ibid., 241 . Colwell used this phrase, “men as mere machines,” or quoted other writers who used it, in numerous other places, but the most passionate and eloquent passage comes from Vicesimus Knox, Works of Vicesimus Knox, D.D. (London, 1 824), 6:428, quoted in New Themes, 313: It [political economy] considers the lord of the creation merely as a sensitive machine, with eyes, arms, hands, and fingers formed to manufacture some commodity saleable in the marts of commerce; merely an animated engine, to be worked at the will of opulence and power for pecuniary gain; merely as a breathing mill or animal automaton, which cannot stand still a moment for the purposes of moral and religious discipline, without irreparable loss of time and unpardonable waste of wealth. 30. Colwell, “Preface,” ix. 31. Colwell, New Themes, 238–39. 32. Ibid., 1 26, 1 90. 33. Ibid., 1 27, 1 29, 1 94. 34. Ibid., 206, 209–1 0, 238. 35. Sernett, “Stephen Colwell,” 33. 36. Ruffner, Charity and the Clergy, 1 30–31 . 37. Colwell, New Themes, 359, 361 . 38. Colwell, “Preface,” xiii. 39. The titles of the six documents, all of which were published in 1 866 as Revenue Commission Special Reports, are Upon High Prices and Their Relations with Currency and Taxation; Influence of the Duplication of Taxes on American Industry; Relations of Foreign Trade to Domestic Industry and Internal Revenue; Over-Importation and Relief; Iron and Steel; and Wool and Manufactures of Wool.

chapter nine 1 . For example, see Per Sveino, Orestes A. Brownson’s Road to Catholicism (New York: Humanities Press, 1970). 2. Ibid., 307; Thomas Richard Ryan, Orestes A. Brownson, A Definitive Biography (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1 976), 1 7. 3. Patrick W. Carey, Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), xii, 4.

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4. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim’s Progress (Boston: Little, Brown, 1 939), 5–36; Carey, American Religious Weathervane, 9–34. 5. Carey, American Religious Weathervane, 34–54. 6. Ryan, Orestes A. Brownson, 1 1 1 , 1 26–27. 7. Carey, American Religious Weathervane, 88. 8. Ibid., 88. 9. Henry F. Brownson, ed., The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, editors’ preface to vol. 4, Heterodox Writings, v. 1 0. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “Orestes Brownson: An American Marxist before Marx,” Sewanee Review 47, no. 3 (1 939): 31 7–23. 1 1 . Orestes Brownson, “Tendency of Modern Civilization,” Boston Quarterly Review 1 (April 1 838): 237. 1 2. Ibid., 225. 1 3. Orestes Brownson, “Christianity and Reform,” Unitarian 1 ( January 1834): 37. 1 4. Brownson, “Tendency of Modern Civilization,” 237. 1 5. Ibid. 1 6. Orestes Brownson, “Introduction,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 ( January 1 840): 2. 1 7. Ibid., 1 . 18. Orestes Brownson, Untitled coda, Boston Quarterly Review 2 (October 1 839): 518. 1 9. Orestes Brownson, review of Workingmans’ Library, by L. C. Bowles, Unitarian 1 (April 1 834): 1 74. 20. Orestes Brownson, “Christianity and Reform,” Unitarian 1 (February 1 834): 51 . 21 . Alonzo Potter, Political Economy, Its Objects, Uses, and Principles Considered with Reference to the Condition of the American People (New York, 1 840), 243. 22. Orestes Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 ( July 1 840): 376–77. This important source was published in two parts, the first in July and the second in October. 23. Brownson, “Tendency of Modern Civilization,” 228. 24. Orestes Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 (October 1 840), 428. 25. Ibid., 430. 26. Orestes Brownson, “Democracy and Reform,” Boston Quarterly Review 2 (October 1 839): 480. 27. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” 430. For an example of Brownson’s more “infidel” thoughts about Christianity and reform during one of his radical phases, see “The Mission of Christ,” Gospel Advocate and Impartial Investigator, September 1 9, 1 829, 295–97. In it he asserted that Christ’s mission was not to atone for the sins of humanity. “The very notion begins with a falsehood,” he contended, “it proceeds with cruelty, and ends as it begun [sic] in—a lie.” Instead, Christ “was to make us righteous” in a worldly rather than supernatural sense. In other words, Christ came “to reform the abuses of his countrymen, to root out their prejudices, to humanize their minds, destroy their bigotry and intolerance, and to give them more enlarged views of God and man. This will appear the object of his mission.” In this same article, however, Brownson also confessed that he was “perfectly aware that most Christians will think I degrade the works of the Saviour,” and he later, as we will see, backed away from this heterodox view and wrote that Christ’s mission was twofold: one theological, to atone for sin; and the other political, to establish the kingdom of God on Earth. 28. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 430. 29. This was Brownson’s twofold argument in a series of articles he wrote in 1 834 entitled simply “Christianity and Reform,” Unitarian 1 ( January and February 1834): 30–39, 51 –58. These particular quotations are found at the very beginning of the series on page 31 . Brownson later wrote that “this essay contains the germ of all we have since published on this subject. It has been

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with us a leading object to bring out, in as bold relief as possible, the great fact, that Jesus was a social reformer, that the aim of his mission was to establish the reign of equality on earth, as well as to secure salvation to the soul hereafter. If there is anything peculiar in our views, it is in the fact, that they aim to reconcile the disciple of Jesus and the social reformer, to bring out Christianity as a means of social reform, and to enlist the Church on the side of the down-trodden masses.” “Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 432. 30. Brownson, “Christianity and Reform,” January and February 1 834, 38–39. 31. Orestes Brownson, review of Social Evils and Their Remedy, by Charles B. Taylor, Unitarian 1 (May 1 834): 239. See also “Laboring Classes,” October 1840, 432. 32. Orestes Brownson, “The Kingdom of God,” Boston Quarterly Review 2 ( July 1839): 326; “Democracy of Christianity,” Boston Quarterly Review 1 (October 1 839): 446. 33. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 388. 34. Stephen Colwell, New Themes for the Protestant Clergy: Creeds without Charity, Theology without Humanity, and Protestantism without Christianity (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1851), 29. 35. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” October 1840, 428. 36. Ibid., 433. 37. Ibid., 434 (emphasis in the original). 38. Ibid., 435 (emphasis in the original). 39. Colwell, New Themes, 238. 40. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 441 , 448, 451 (emphasis in the original). It also bears mentioning that Brownson’s anti-clerical and anti-institutional phase, as we will see, followed the same course as his earlier phases. In 1 840, Brownson strenuously denied the necessity of earthly mediation between human beings and God, besides that of Christ himself. By 1 844, however, Brownson had reversed his view of institutions and embraced the Catholic Church precisely because he thought it was the only legitimate earthly mediation between human beings and God. 41 . These two sentences, remarkable for their similarity, actually come from two different sources. The first is from review of Social Evils and Their Remedy, by Charles B. Taylor, 238; the second from A Discourse on the Wants of the Times, Delivered in Lyceum Hall, Hanover Street, Boston, Sunday, May 29, 1836 (Boston, 1836), 1 9. 42. Brownson, Discourse on the Wants of the Times, 20; “Democracy and Reform,” 479. 43. Brownson, “Tendency of Modern Civilization,” 203. 44. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 473. 45. Ibid., 474. 46. Ibid. 47. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” July and October 1840, 372, 473–74. 48. Ibid., 472. 49. Brownson, Discourse on the Wants of the Times, 20. 50. Orestes Brownson, “The Times—The Past, Present, and Future. Factions, Religious and Political. The English System and Catholicism. The English System in America. Democracy. Its Tendency. Result.” Boston Quarterly Review 4 ( January 1841 ): 45; “Democracy,” Boston Quarterly Review 1 ( January 1 838): 34. Here we have in a nutshell the thesis of progressive historians, and from the mouth of one of the nineteenth century’s most prominent intellectuals. 51 . Orestes Brownson, “The Times,” Boston Quarterly Review 4 ( January 1 841): 45. 52. Orestes Brownson, Babylon Is Falling: A Discourse Preached in the Masonic Temple, to the Society for Christian Union and Progress, on Sunday Morning, May 28, 1837 (Boston: Butts, 1837), 5–6. 53. Ibid., 1 1 , 7, 8, 1 4. 54. Ibid., 1 1 . 55. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” July 1 840, 393.

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56. Ibid., 393–94. 57. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” October 1840, 480. 58. Brownson, Discourse on the Wants of the Times, iv. 59. Orestes Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 484. 60. Brownson’s unyielding insistence on individual property rights also led him to attack the ownership of common property in marriage—yet another notion that did not win him many friends. “The sexes are equal,” he wrote, but marriage “should never be regarded as a marriage of estates, but of persons, and hearts. Each should have the means of living independent of that relation.” “Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 498. 61 . Brownson, Babylon Is Falling, 1 2. 62. Brownson, “Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 490–91.

chapter ten 1 . Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim’s Progress (Boston: Little, Brown, 1 939), 101; Patrick W. Carey, Orestes A. Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 94. 2. [Junius] Calvin Colton, Sequel to the Crisis of the Country (New York, 1840), 1 , 7. 3. Thomas Richard Ryan, Orestes A. Brownson: A Definitive Biography (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1 976), 1 74. 4. Orestes Brownson, The Convert; or, Leaves from My Experience (New York: Dunigan, 1857), 1 20, quoted in Ryan, Orestes A. Brownson: A Definitive Biography, 1 88. 5. Ryan, Orestes A. Brownson: A Definitive Biography, 1 74. 6. Orestes Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 (October 1 840): 423–24. 7. Orestes Brownson, “Democracy and Liberty,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1 2 (April 1 843): 374 (emphasis in the original); “Popular Government,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1 2 (May 1 843): 530. 8. Brownson, “Democracy and Liberty,” 374. 9. Brownson, “Popular Government,” 531 –32. 1 0. Ryan, Orestes A. Brownson: A Definitive Biography, 1 91 . 1 1 . For Brownson’s thoughts on the so-called Dorr War, see “The Suffrage Party in Rhode Island,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 6 (October 1844): 532–44; and “Slavery and the Mexican War,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 9 ( July 1847): 343–46. For his opinions of the 1 848 European Revolutions, see “Recent European Events,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 1 0 ( July 1 848): 380–410; and “Legitimacy and Revolutionism, Conservatism, and Reform,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 1 0 (October 1 848): 453–82. Brownson expressed his views on political censorship in “The Licentiousness of the Press,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 1 1 (October 1 849): 51 7–43. 1 2. Schlesinger, Orestes Brownson: A Pilgrim’s Progress, 1 36, 1 1 1 . 1 3. Brownson, “Popular Government,” 530. 1 4. Carey, American Religious Weathervane, 1 00, 1 07, 105–6, 1 04, 1 1 0. 15. Orestes Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review ( July 1840): 377. 1 6. “The Present State of Society,” in The Works of Orestes A. Brownson (New York: AMS Press, 1 966), 4:435 (originally published in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1 3 [July 1 843]: 1 7–38). 1 7. I have borrowed this phrase from Russell Kirk. The idea of “the wisdom of the ancestors,” Kirk explains, a phrase used throughout the works of Edmund Burke, is a more colloquial way of describing “the principle of prescription”—“that is, of things established by immemorial usage.” The human race, Kirk continues, “has acquired habits, customs, and conventions of remote origin which are woven into the fabric of our social being; the innovator, in Santayana’s phrase, never

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knows how near to the taproot of the tree he is hacking.” Introduction to The Portable Conservative Reader, ed. Russell Kirk (New York: Penguin Books, 1982), xvi. The fact that Kirk included in this collection one of Brownson’s later essays should indicate just how thorough his post-1 840 conversion to conservatism really was. 1 8. Orestes Brownson, Social Reform: An Address before the Society of the Mystical Seven in the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, August 7, 1844 (Boston: Waite, Pierce, 1 844), 1 3 (emphases in the original). 1 9. Orestes Brownson, “Reform and Conservatism,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 ( January 1 842): 62–63. 20. Brownson, Social Reform, 21 –22 (emphases in the original). 21 . Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1 984), 28. 22. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1 989), 3. 23. Brownson, Social Reform, 9, 1 8–1 9. 24. Brownson, “Democracy and Liberty,” 386. It is striking how much Brownson’s intellectual journey resembles that of Reinhold Niebuhr, the famous “Christian realist” of the twentieth century. Although there are some obvious differences—Brownson converted to Catholicism and Niebuhr did not—both men’s lives changed when they reasserted the doctrine of original sin and made their peace with the existing, imperfect institutions of their day. Brownson, however, in his pilgrimage to Rome, seemed to pay more attention to ecclesiastical institutions, while Niebuhr emphasized the role of the nation-state. It is also noteworthy that both men’s turn to “realism” began after having been disappointed by party politics. For Brownson it was the Democrats’ defeat in 1 840, while for Niebuhr it was the Socialists’ poor performance in the 1 932 national elections. 25. Orestes Brownson, “Brook Farm,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1 1 (November 1 842): 482. 26. Brownson, Social Reform, 1 0 (emphases in the original). 27. Orestes Brownson, “Social Evils and Their Remedy,” Boston Quarterly Review 4 ( July 1 841): 280. In a review he wrote later that same year, Brownson also expressed some reservations about George Bancroft’s triumphalistic view of democracy. See “Bancroft’s History,” Boston Quarterly Review 4 (October 1 841 ): 51 2–18. 28. Brownson, “Democracy and Liberty,” 385. 29. Orestes Brownson, “Catholicity Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 7 (October 1 845): 51 7. 30. Orestes Brownson, “Oration on the Scholar’s Mission: An Address Given to the Gamma Sigma Society of Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., July 26, 1 843,” in The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 19:78–83 (all emphases in the original). 31. Orestes Brownson, “No Church, No Reform,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 6 (April 1844): 1 89, 1 88. 32. Ibid., 1 89, 1 91 (all emphases in the original). 33. Brownson, “No Church, No Reform,” 1 93. For a longer example of the external fulcrum metaphor, see Brownson, Social Reform, 22–23. 34. Carey, American Religious Weathervane, 151 . 35. Ibid., 1 42, 1 41. 36. Brownson, “No Church, No Reform,” 1 93. 37. Brownson, Social Reform, 40–41. 38. Brownson, “No Church, No Reform,” 94. 39. Brownson’s ecclesiology, incidentally, got only more and more rigid with the passage of time. In another tellingly entitled article, he argued that “without the Roman Catholic Church, it

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is not possible to be saved.” “Faith Not Possible without the Church,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 8 ( January 1 846): 1 . 40. Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 475–76. For another example of Brownson’s dislike of protective economic policies, see his article “Equality,—No. 1 ,” Gospel Advocate and Impartial Investigator, September 5, 1 829, 282–83. 41. Brownson, “The Laboring Classes” October 1 840, 507–8. 42. Brownson, “The Present State of Society,” 4:458–59. 43. For example, see Orestes Brownson, “The Community System,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1 2 (February 1 843): 138. 44. Ibid., 1 43–44. 45. Carey, American Religious Weathervane, 129. 46. Ibid., 1 30. 47. Ibid., 1 31. 48. Orestes Brownson, “Socialism and the Church” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 1 1 (October 1 849): 1 03, 1 09. For more on Brownson’s direct rejection of his former radical influences, see Social Reform, 1 4–1 8; and “No Church, No Reform,” 1 86–94. The subtitle of the latter piece, “Addressed Especially to the Fourierists,” is also instructive. Still penitent about the radicalism of his youth, Brownson again took time to repudiate the materialism and arrogance of Fourier’s philosophy in particular. 49. Brownson, “Socialism and the Church” 1 03. 50. Ibid., 1 03, 1 09.

chapter eleven 1 . Francis Wayland, “Discourse on Education: An Introductory Address Delivered in Boston, before the Convention of Teachers, and Other Friends of Education, Assembled to Form the American Institute of Instruction, August 1 9, 1830,” in Occasional Discourses, including Several Never before Published by Francis Wayland, President of Brown University (Boston: James Loring, 1 833), 297 (emphasis in original). 2. Stephen Colwell, New Themes for the Protestant Clergy: Creeds without Charity, Theology without Humanity, and Protestantism without Christianity, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 852), xvi. 3. Orestes Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 ( July 1 840): 377; “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 (October 1 840): 434; “Christianity and Reform,” Unitarian 1 ( January 1834): 38–39 (emphasis in original); review of Social Evils and Their Remedy, by Charles B. Taylor, Unitarian 1 (May 1834): 238; A Discourse on the Wants of the Times, Delivered in Lyceum Hall, Hanover Street, Boston, Sunday, May 29, 1836 (Boston, 1836), 1 9. 4. Colwell, New Themes for the Protestant Clergy, 1 2–27, 35; Orestes Brownson, “The Mission of Christ,” Gospel Advocate and Impartial Investigator, September 19, 1 829, 296; Brownson, review of Social Evils and Their Remedy, 239; Brownson, Discourse on the Wants of the Times, 1 8–1 9. 5. Stephen Colwell, “The Poor and Poor Laws of Great Britain,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 1 2 ( January 1 841 ): 1 24–27; Orestes Brownson, “Christianity and Reform,” Unitarian (February 1 834): 52; Orestes Brownson, Babylon Is Falling: A Discourse Preached in the Masonic Temple, to the Society for Christian Union and Progress, on Sunday Morning, May 28, 1837 (Boston, 1 837), 22. 6. Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, 4th ed. (1 841 ; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1854), 1 5, 1 07–8 (originally published in 1 837). 7. John McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy, Being a Republication of the Article upon That Subject Contained in the Edinburgh Supplement to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Together with Notes Explanatory and Critical, and a Summary of the Science (New York: Wilder and Campbell, 1 825), 1 86; John McVickar, “Introductory Lecture to a Course Now Delivering at New York,” Banner of

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the Constitution, April 1 7, 1 830, 273; Henry Vethake, An Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy, Delivered at Nassau Hall, January 31, 1831 (Princeton, NJ: 1 831 ), 3, 26. 8. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1 981), 28. 9. Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics Since Independence (New York: Basic Books, 1 987), 38, 1 9, 33. 1 0. Orestes Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 ( July 1840): 376. 1 1 . Matt. 1 9:24 (King James Version). 1 2. Stephen Colwell, New Themes for the Protestant Clergy: Creeds without Charity, Theology without Humanity, and Protestantism without Christianity (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1852), 30. 1 3. Ibid., 1 1 4. 1 4. Matt. 22:21 (King James Version). 1 5. Brownson, “The Laboring Classes,” July 1 840, 388; “The Laboring Classes,” October 1 840, 432. 1 6. Orestes Brownson, “Modern Idolatry,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 7 ( July 1845): 393–97. 1 7. Colwell, New Themes for the Protestant Clergy, 1 90.

chapter twelve 1 . Henry A. Boardman, The Bible in the Counting House: A Course of Lectures to Merchants (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 853), 35; Orville Dewey, “On the Uses and the Passion for a Fortune,” in The Works of Orville Dewey D.D., vol. 2, Discourses on the Nature of Religion: and on Commerce and Business; with Some Occasional Discourses (New York, 1 848), 21 8–1 9 (emphases in the original). 2. William Arnot, The Race for Riches, and Some of the Pits into Which the Runners Fall: Six Lectures Applying the Word of God to the Traffic of Men (Philadelphia, 1 853). 3. Matt. 7:1 2 (King James Version). 4. Dewey, “Discourses on Commerce and Business,” in Discourses on the Nature of Religion, 248 (originally published as Moral Views of Commerce, Society, and Politics, in Twelve Discourses [New York, 1 838]). 5. Arnot, Race for Riches, 57–58. 6. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” in Discourses on the Nature of Religion, 1 52; Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 13. 7. Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 1 3. 8. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” 1 52. 9. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Dewey, Orville”; Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 243, The American Renaissance in New England, 4th ser., s.v. “Dewey, Orville.” 1 0. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Peabody, Andrew Preston.” 1 1 . Andrew P. Peabody, Views of Duty Adapted to the Times: A Sermon Preached at Portsmouth, N.H., May 14, 1837 (Portsmouth, NH: Foster, 1 837), 6, 8. 1 2. Jason Whitman, The Hard Times: A Discourse, Delivered in the Second Unitarian Church, and Also in the First Parish Church, Portland, Sunday, January 1st, 1837 (Portland, ME, 1 837), 6, 7, 1 3. 1 3. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Emerson, Joseph”; Joseph Emerson, Christian Economy: A Sermon Delivered before the Massachusetts Missionary Society, at Their Fourteenth Annual Meeting, in Boston, May 25, 1813 (Boston, 1 81 3), 7. 14. Joshua Bates, A Discourse on Honesty in Dealing: Delivered at Middlebury, on the Annual Fast: April 15, 1818 (Middlebury, VT, 1 81 8), 3. 1 5. David McConaughy, The Duties and Dangers of Prosperity: A Sermon, Delivered in the Presbyterian Church in Gettysburg, on Thursday the 20th of November, 1817, Being a Day of Thanksgiving, on Account of the General Plenty and Prosperity (Gettysburg, PA, 1 81 7), 1 7.

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notes to pages 175–181

1 6. Leonard Bacon, The Duties Connected with the Present Commercial Distress: A Sermon, Preached in the Center Church, New Haven, May 21, 1837, and Repeated May 23 (New Haven, CT, 1 837), 7. 1 7. Ibid. 1 8. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Bacon, Leonard,” and “Bacon, David.” For more, see Hugh Davis, Leonard Bacon: New England Reformer and Antislavery Moderate (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1 998). 1 9. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Wainwright, Jonathan Mayhew.” 20. Biographical information from Henry C. Fish, ed., History and Repository of Pulpit Eloquence (New York: Dodd, 1 856), 1 :582. 21 . Peabody, Views of Duty Adapted to the Times, 5–9. 22. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” 1 52. 23. Ibid., 187. 24. Dewey, “On the Uses of Labour and the Passion for a Fortune,” in Discourses on the Nature of Religion, 220. 25. Jonathan Wainwright, Inequality of Wealth the Ordinance of Providence, and Essential to Civilization: A Sermon Preached before His Excellency, John Davis, Governor, His Honor Samuel T. Armstrong, Lt. Governor, the Honorable Council and the Legislature of Massachusetts, on the Annual Election, January 7, 1835 (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1 835), 21–28. 26. Ibid. 27. Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 1 4–1 5. 28. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” 1 53. 29. Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 77. 30. Lisa Hill, “The Hidden Theology of Adam Smith,” European Journal of Economic Thought 8, no. 1 (2001 ): 1 1 . 31 . Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 77 (emphasis mine). 32. Ibid., 83. 33. Arnot, Race for Riches, 64; Dewey, “On the Moral Limits of Accumulation,” in Discourses on the Nature of Religion, 244. 34. Arnot, Race for Riches, 132.

chapter thirteen 1 . Orville Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” in The Works of Orville Dewey D.D., vol. 2, Discourses on the Nature of Religion: and on Commerce and Business; with Some Occasional Discourses (New York, 1 848), 1 54 (emphasis in the original). 2. Orville Dewey had some interesting thoughts about the question of usury and “the just price.” Going against centuries of Christian thought on these matters, Dewey argued that the market and not conscience should determine the price of things. “The terms on which we are to buy and sell,” he wrote: are established for us by a very obvious rule. In a general view, we may say, that conscience has nothing to do with affixing a price. That is determined by a thousand circumstances and a million voices. . . . In this view, the moral course in almost the entire business of trade, seems to be exceedingly plain. . . . No man needs to carry with him, in regard to most of the transactions of business, a disturbed or a doubtful conscience. Usury too, in Dewey’s opinion, was unjustly maligned. The market should determine the price of money just as it determined the price of other goods. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” 1 67–69.

notes to pages 182–191

245

3. Ibid., 1 57–58. 4. Joseph Emerson, Christian Economy: A Sermon Delivered before the Massachusetts Missionary Society, at Their Fourteenth Annual Meeting, in Boston, May 25, 1813 (Boston, 1 81 3), 7. 5. Joshua Bates, A Discourse on Honesty in Dealing: Delivered at Middlebury, on the Annual Fast: April 15, 1818 (Middlebury, VT, 1 81 8), 6 (all emphases in the original). 6. Henry A. Boardman, The Bible in the Counting House: A Course of Lectures to Merchants (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 853), 385 (all emphases in the original). 7. Bates, Discourse on Honesty in Dealing, 4 (all emphases in the original). 8. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” 154. 9. Francis Wayland, The Moral Law of Accumulation: The Substance of Two Discourses Delivered in the First Baptist Meeting House, Providence, May 14, 1837, 2nd ed. (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1 837), 1 3. 10. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts, 1 57–58; Emerson, Christian Economy, 7; Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 385. 1 1 . Orville Dewey, “On the Moral Limits of Accumulation,” in Works of Orville Dewey, 234 (emphases mine). 1 2. Orville Dewey, “On the Moral Ends of Business, in Works of Orville Dewey, 1 97. 1 3. Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, 4th ed. (1841 ; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1 854), 15 (originally published in 1 837). 1 4. Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 1 30 (emphasis in the original). For more of Howe’s explanation of faculty psychology and its centrality, see Making the American Self, 5–1 3; Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 979), 29–31 ; and Howe, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–1861 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1 988), 56–64 (first published by Harvard University Press in 1 970). 1 5. Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 1 3. 1 6. Howe, Making the American Self, 28. In a footnote to this sentence, Howe appropriately points readers to Albert O. Hirschman’s The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977). 1 7. Howe, Making the American Self, 130. 1 8. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1958), 136, 47. 1 9. William Arnot, The Race for Riches, and Some of the Pits into Which the Runners Fall: Six Lectures Applying the Word of God to the Traffic of Men (Philadelphia, 1 853), 64–65. 20. Francis Wayland, “The Perils of Riches,” in Sermons to the Churches (New York: Sheldon, Blakeman, 1 858), 206. 21 . Bates, Discourse on Honesty in Dealing, 8–9. 22. Wayland, “Peril of Riches,” 206.

chapter fourteen 1 . Joseph Emerson, Christian Economy: A Sermon Delivered before the Massachusetts Missionary Society, at Their Fourteenth Annual Meeting, in Boston, May 25, 1813 (Boston, 181 3), 3. 2. Walter Blake Kirwan, “Seeking Another’s Wealth,” in History and Repository of Pulpit Eloquence, ed. Henry C. Fish (New York: Dodd, 1 856), 1 :583 (emphasis in the original). 3. Joshua Bates, A Discourse on Honesty in Dealing: Delivered at Middlebury, on the Annual Fast: April 15, 1818 (Middlebury, VT, 1 81 8), 3–4. 4. Emerson, Christian Economy, 7.

246

notes to pages 192–204

5. Report and Proposal to the Public on the Subject of Female Wages: By a Committee of the Female Benevolent Society (First Congregational Church) (Providence, RI, 1 837), 6. 6. Orville Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contract,” in The Works of Orville Dewey D.D., vol. 2, Discourses on the Nature of Religion: and on Commerce and Business; with Some Occasional Discourses (New York, 1 848), 178, 1 62. 7. Ibid., 1 63. 8. Bates, Discourse on Honesty in Dealing, 9, 10, 1 4. 9. Walter Blake Kirwan, “Seeking Another’s Wealth,” in History and Repository of Pulpit Eloquence, 1 :584. 1 0. Francis Wayland, The Moral Law of Accumulation, the Substance of Two Discourses Delivered in the First Baptist Meeting House, Providence, May 14, 1837, 2nd ed. (Boston: Gould, Kendall, and Lincoln, 1 837), 1 0, 1 3, 1 6, 1 1 , 31 . 1 1 . Ibid., 1 6, 9, 1 3. 1 2. Kirwan, “Seeking Another’s Wealth,” 584. 1 3. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” 160–61. 1 4. Ibid. 1 5. Henry A. Boardman, The Bible in the Counting House: A Course of Lectures to Merchants (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1853), 1 74–75. 1 6. Ibid., 1 76; Wayland, Moral Law of Accumulation, 1 8; Dewey, “On the Moral Limits of Accumulation,” 245–49. 1 7. Leonard Bacon, The Duties Connected with the Present Commercial Distress: A Sermon, Preached in the Center Church, New Haven, May 21, 1837, and Repeated May 23 (New Haven, CT, 1837), 9–10. 1 8. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” 161 ; Dewey, “On the Moral Limits of Accumulation,” 246. 1 9. Wayland, Moral Law of Accumulation, 8. 20. Ibid., 9, 26. 21. Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts” 1 63; Wayland, Moral Law of Accumulation, 8, 9; Wayland, “The Perils of Riches,” in Sermons to the Churches (New York: Sheldon, Blakeman, 1 858), 206. 22. Bates, Discourse on Honesty in Dealing, 6 (all emphases in the original). 23. Henry Vethake, The Principles of Political Economy (Philadelphia: Nicklin and Johnson, 1 838), 1 78–79; John McVickar, Outlines of Political Economy (New York, 1 835), 90–91 . 24. Bacon, Duties Connected with the Present Commercial Distress, 8. 25. Andrew P. Peabody, Views of Duty Adapted to the Times: A Sermon Preached at Portsmouth, N.H., May 14, 1837 (Portsmouth, NH: Foster, 1837), 1 2. 26. Wayland, Moral Law of Accumulation, 9. 27. Orville Dewey, “On the Moral Ends of Business,” in Works of Orville Dewey, 1 96–97; Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 1 42. 28. Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 1 38. 29. Ibid., 139. 30. Ibid. 31 . Ibid., 1 64 (emphasis in the original).

chapter fifteen 1 . Henry A. Boardman, The Bible in the Counting House: A Course of Lectures to Merchants (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1 853), 154. 2. Ibid., 1 38–40 (emphasis in the original). 3. Ibid., 1 36, 1 42; Henry Vethake, The Principles of Political Economy (Philadelphia: Nicklin and Johnson, 1 838), 1 78; Orville Dewey, “On the Moral Ends of Business,” in The Works of Orville

notes to pages 204–217

247

Dewey D.D., vol. 2, Discourses on the Nature of Religion: and on Commerce and Business; with Some Occasional Discourses (New York, 1 848), 1 95 (emphasis in the original). 4. Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 1 62 (emphases in the original). 5. Jason Whitman, The Hard Times: A Discourse, Delivered in the Second Unitarian Church, and Also in the First Parish Church, Portland, Sunday, January 1st, 1837 (Portland, ME, 1 837), 6–7. 6. Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Noonday Press, 1 990), 205. 7. Peter L. Rousseau, “Jacksonian Monetary Policy, Specie Flows, and the Panic of 1837,” Working Paper 7528 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2000). 8. Ibid., 1 . 9. Patrick W. Carey, Orestes Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 88. 1 0. Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 1 42. For other examples of Boardman’s description of the economy as a harmonious but vulnerable machine, see 46, 1 02. 1 1 . Ibid., 1 69. 1 2. Francis Wayland, The Elements of Political Economy, 4th ed. (1 841; repr., New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1854), 1 31 (originally published in 1 837). 1 3. Alonzo Potter, review of Principles of Political Economy, by Henry Carey, New York Review 3 ( July 1838): 1 9. 1 4. Spencer Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues: A Partial Resolution of the Adam Smith Problem,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 19, no. 1 : 1 27–40. See also Vivienne Brown, Adam Smith’s Discourse: Canonicity, Commerce, and Conscience (London: Routledge Press, 1 994); and James R. Otteson, “The Recurring ‘Adam Smith Problem,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly 17, no. 1 : 51 –74. 1 5. Pack, “Adam Smith on the Virtues,” 127, 1 33. 1 6. Ibid., 1 34, 1 35. 1 7. Ibid., 1 34. 1 8. Amos Witztum, “A Study into Smith’s Conception of the Human Character: Das Adam Smith Problem Revisited,” History of Political Economy 30, no. 3 (1 998): 495 (emphasis in the original). 19. Ibid. 20. Leonidas Montes, “Das Adam Smith Problem: Its Origins, the Stages of the Current Debate, and One Implication for Our Understanding of Sympathy,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 25, no. 1 (2003): 74. The terms “motivating force” and “regulating force” are from Montes, but he is summarizing the work of Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (Bristol: Thoemmes Antiquarian Books, 1 991 ), 32 (originally published in 1876). 21. Boardman, Bible in the Counting House, 1 69. 22. Witztum, “Study into Smith’s Conception,” 489, 507 (emphases in the original). 23. Matt. 7:1 2 (King James Version). 24. Witztum, “Study into Smith’s Conception,” 507, 493. 25. Lyman Atwater, review of The Bible in the Counting House, by Henry A. Boardman, Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 25 (1 853): 390.

conclusion 1 . Luke 1 6:1 –13 (King James Version). 2. Much of the interpretation presented here relies on the work of the German scholar Emil Brunner, Sowing and Reaping: The Parables of Jesus, trans. Thomas Wieser (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1 946), 76–83. 3. Luke 1 6:1 3; Matt. 1 9:24; 1 Tim. 6:1 0 (King James Version).

248

notes to pages 218–219

4. Orestes Brownson, “No Church, No Reform,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 6 (April 1 844): 1 91 (emphasis in the original). 5. Orestes Brownson, “The Community System,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 1 2 (February 1 843): 1 43. 6. Orville Dewey, “On the Moral Law of Contracts,” in The Works of Orville Dewey, D.D., vol. 2, Discourses on the Nature of Religion; and on Commerce and Business; with some Occasional Discourses (New York, 1 848), 1 54 (emphasis in the original). 7. 1 Corinthians 13:12 (King James Version).

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Index

abolition, abolitionists: in Britain, 1 1 2, 225n1 8, 235n8; in U.S., 46, 1 1 2–1 3; as viewed by Colwell, 1 1 0–1 3, 235n8 “adapted” response, of pastoral moralists, 95–96, 1 68–69, 1 89, 21 1 America, Americans: and attitudes toward utilitarianism, 74; as classless society, 1 02–5; facing changes from developing economy, industrialization, 3–6, 49, 91 , 92, 97, 98, 1 1 2–1 3, 1 64, 21 4–1 6; as social experiment, 49, 56–58, 83–84; as supposed exception to political economic theories, 97–1 05 Andover Theological Seminary, 1 24, 1 72 antebellum colleges, 20, 37, 43, 230n2. See also clerical economists: as Protestant educators; and individual colleges and universities Arnot, William: The Race for Riches, 1 68, 176; and views of market capitalism, 171 , 1 76, 1 79, 1 80, 1 87 Atwater, Lyman, 44–47, 57; Judgments in the House of God, 45; “The True Progress of Society,” 45 Bacon, David, 1 75 Bacon, Leonard, 1 75, 1 96, 1 98 balance. See faculty psychology

Bank of the United States, 36, 46 Baptist, Baptists, 1 7, 38, 1 82, 1 88 Bates, Joshua, 174, 176; and attempt to draw boundaries, 1 82, 1 87–89, 1 93; “A Discourse on Honesty in Dealing,” 191 Bentham, Jeremy, 161 Bible: and importance to Americans, 1; as used by contrarians, 1 1 5–21, 158, 160, 162–63, 217–1 8; 236n22; as used by pastoral moralists, 1 68–69, 191–92, 1 95–97, 200, 204, 21 1 Bible in the Counting House, The (Boardman), 8, 45, 1 73–74, 1 82 Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, The, 110 Biddle, Nicholas, 46 Blake, William, 31 Boardman, Henry A., 173–74; The Bible in the Counting House, 8, 45, 1 73–74, 1 82; Piety Essential to Man’s Temporal Prosperity, 1 73; and views on luxury and speculation, 195, 199, 200–201, 203–5; 207; and views on market capitalism, 5–6, 1 67, 1 72, 174, 1 78–79, 1 82, 21 0 Boston Quarterly Review (Brownson), 126, 1 29, 1 39, 1 40–41 Boston Reformer (Brownson), 126 Bowen, Francis, 43–44, 1 73; and Francis Wayland, 74; and views on political economy, 35, 43–44, 63, 1 04

261

262

index

Britain, Britons: and abolitionist movement, 1 1 2, 225n1 8; as industrial leader, 3, 24; and Panic of 1 837, 205–6; and problems resulting from industrialization, 10, 31 , 97–98, 1 00–1 04, 1 1 0–1 3, 1 76, 224n1 0 Brook Farm, 1 51 –52 Brownson, Henry, 128 Brownson, Orestes: and attacks on clergy, clerical economists, 1 30–35, 1 50, 1 57; biography of, 1 23–27, 1 39–42; as “character,” 16, 1 07, 1 40, 145–46, 1 56, 1 63; as Christian economic contrarian, 9, 1 07, 1 27–38, 1 39–42, 1 55–57, 206–9, 21 7; and Christian rationale for ideas, 1 26, 1 28–35, 1 49, 1 50, 1 58–60, 1 62, 1 63–64, 238n29; and controversy sparked by, 8, 138, 1 39–41 ; and conversion to Catholicism, 1 6, 1 24, 1 25, 1 27, 132, 1 42, 1 49, 1 50, 153, 1 63, 239n40, 241n24, 241 n39; and desire to reform Christianity, 1 32–35, 1 49, 1 58–59, 238n27; and disillusionment with “the people,” 1 41 –43, 1 47–48; and hatred of inequality, 123–24, 1 28–38, 1 39–42, 1 45–46, 1 49, 1 58–59, 1 63, 217–1 8; and life and intellectual transformations, 1 6, 1 23–29, 1 39–53, 218; and love of America, 1 34–38; and opposition to hereditary property, 1 36–38, 1 39–42, 1 43–44, 151 , 240n60; and philosophy of institutions as superior to individuals, 1 43–53, 1 63, 218; and support of working classes, 1 23–24, 1 26, 127–38, 1 39–40, 146–47, 1 50–51 , 1 53; as utilitarian, 1 53, 1 63 Brownson, Orestes, works of: Babylon Is Falling, 206; Boston Quarterly Review, 1 26, 1 29, 1 39–41 ; Boston Reformer, 1 26; “A Gospel Creed,” 1 25; “The Laboring Classes,” 8, 1 39–40, 1 43–44, 1 46–47, 1 50, 1 51 , 1 53, 156, 206; “My Creed,” 1 25; New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church, 1 26; Oration on the Scholar’s Mission, 1 48; “Reform and Conservatism,” 1 45 Brown University, 36, 38–40 Brunner, Emil, 247n2 Calvinism, Calvinists, 1 73, 1 74 capitalism. See market capitalism Carey, Henry Charles, 8, 1 09 Carey, Matthew, 8

Carey, Patrick W., 1 44, 149, 1 52 Carlyle, Thomas, 33 Catholics, Catholicism, 8, 1 1 3, 124, 176. See also under Brownson, Orestes Chalmers, Thomas, 9, 57, 69–72, 75; On Political Economy in Connexion with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society, 70, 71 Channing, William Ellery, 1 72 “character”: and Christian contrarians, 1 07, 1 40, 1 45–46, 156, 163; and clerical economists, 15, 156, 160; as influencing ethics, 1 1 , 1 5–1 7, 160, 214–1 6, 21 9 charity, as promoted by Stephen Colwell, 1 1 6–21 Christian Economy (Emerson), 1 74, 182, 191 Christianity, Christian ethics, 1–4; and Adam Smith, 29–30; ambiguity in, 1 0–1 1 , 1 55; and distinction between individuals and system, 59, 60, 87–93, 1 67, 171 , 1 80, 1 94–96, 21 5; vs. precepts of political economy, 9, 20, 26, 33, 35, 43–46, 58, 59–72, 73–84, 87–98, 1 1 3–21, 1 55–65, 21 3–1 9; as viewed by Christian contrarians, 1 1 3–21, 1 28–38, 155–64; as viewed by clerical economists, 156–65; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 1 68–69, 1 81 –82, 188–89, 1 91–93, 1 99, 200–201 , 203 Christian Republicanism, 88, 196 Christian Socialism: 1 1 0, 1 1 4, 151–52. See also socialism Church of Ireland, 176 Clay, Henry, 45, 46 clerical economists: as champions of political economy, 8–9, 1 9–21 , 35–47, 49–58, 59–72, 73–84, 98–1 05, 1 1 3, 156–57, 1 61 –62, 1 64, 168, 208–9; and “characters,” 15, 1 56, 160; and Christian rationale for economic theories, 12, 19–21 , 36–44, 47, 49–58, 59–84, 87–96, 157–58, 1 61 –62, 21 6–1 7; and das Adam Smith Problem, 9, 29–31 , 52, 60, 208–1 1 ; and disputes with contrarians, 1 07, 1 1 3–21, 1 29–35, 1 50, 1 56; and focus on God, 159–60; and ignoring ethical questions, 1 1 , 17, 21, 60, 74, 80–81, 87–88, 94–96, 1 79, 1 86–87, 206, 209–1 1 , 219; and international economy as divine plan, 75–84, 217; as keepers of national order,

index 1 5, 1 8, 49–51, 74, 83–84, 89–90, 1 56, 21 4, 21 6; and natural theology, 37–39, 43, 46–47, 52–53, 56, 60, 66–67, 74, 82, 91 –92, 1 56, 1 61 , 1 86, 21 5–1 7; as optimists, 9, 41–42, 52–58, 91 , 98–1 05, 1 79, 208; as Protestant educators, 1 9, 20, 35–46, 49–58, 87–90, 1 56, 21 4; and scientific authority of political economy, 62–72, 89–90, 21 6; and Scottish common sense philosophy, 37–39, 43, 46–47, 52, 60, 74, 1 56; and self-interest, 183–87; and utilitarianism, 1 5, 73–84, 92, 1 03, 1 60–64, 1 85–86, 206, 209, 21 4–1 6; and views of Adam Smith, 1 1 , 26, 29, 49–58, 73, 76, 80, 94, 1 1 3, 1 30, 1 56, 1 79, 216; and views of America as exceptional, 97–1 05; and views of history, society, 1 57–65; and views of poverty, inequality, 96–98, 1 30, 1 56; and virtue vs. wealth, 87–96, 208; and Whig Party, 36–37, 42–43, 45–46, 216. See also individual clerical economists “clerical school,” 36, 44, 227n6 College of New Jersey. See Princeton Colton, Calvin, 44–45, 1 01 , 1 04; and differences with clerical economists, 45–46, 1 00–1 01 ; and Orestes Brownson, 1 39–40; Public Economy for the United States, 45, 1 01 ; The Rights of Labor, 45 Columbia College: 40–41 , 43, 46–47, 175, 228n1 2 Colwell, Stephen: and battles with clergy, clerical economists, 1 1 3–21, 1 30, 1 57–58; biography of, 1 1 0–1 3, 235n1 , 235n3; as Christian economic contrarian, 9, 1 07, 1 09–21, 1 23–24, 1 29, 155–57, 208–9, 21 7–1 8; and Christian rationale for economic ideas, 1 1 3–21, 1 26, 1 55–56, 1 58–60, 1 62, 164; and pamphlets authored by, 1 1 1 , 121 ; and use of Bible, 1 1 5–20, 217–1 8, 236n22. See also Brownson, Orestes; contrarians Colwell, Stephen, works of: Financial Suggestions and Remarks, 1 1 0; New Themes for the Protestant Clergy, 8, 1 1 5, 1 21 , 1 23, 1 33, 1 56; “Notes,” “Preliminary Essay” to National System of Political Economy (List), 1 1 0; Politics for American Christians, 1 21 ; The Position of Christianity in the United States in Relation with Our Political Institutions, 121

263

communists, 50 competition, 191 –94. See also under pastoral moralists Comte, Auguste, 50 Congregational churches, Congregationalists, 45, 174–75, 1 92 Conkin, Paul, 1 01 –2, 234n7 conservatism: and political economy, 26; as viewed by clerical economists, 49–51 , 229n1 contrarians: and attacks on clergy, clerical economists, 1 1 3–21, 1 30–35, 1 50, 157–58; and “characters,” 1 5, 1 07, 160; and Christian rationale for ideas, 1 2, 1 1 3–21, 1 26, 1 28–35, 149–50, 1 59–64, 1 85; and deontology, 1 5, 160–64, 21 4, 21 6–1 7; and focus on Jesus, 1 59–60, 238n29; as gadflies, 15, 1 38, 140, 156, 21 4, 206–9, 21 7–1 8; as opposed to political economy, 9–1 0, 96, 1 07, 1 1 3–21, 1 27–38, 156–64; as pessimists, 9–1 1 , 1 50–51 , 1 58–59; and serving poor, 17, 1 60, 162, 164, 214, 21 7; and views on history, society, 1 57–67. See also Brownson, Orestes; Colwell, Stephen Cooper, Thomas, 228n1 2 Darwinism, as viewed by clerical economists, 45 das Adam Smith Problem, 28, 30–31 ; and clerical economists, 9, 29–31, 52, 60, 208–1 1 ; and pastoral moralists, 174, 208–1 1 Davis, David Brion, 24, 74–75, 225n1 8 Degler, Carl, 2 dehumanization of worker, 31 , 84, 1 04–5, 121 Democratic Party, 1 39–41 , 150, 1 57, 241 n24 deontology, 1 1 –1 2, 168–69, 21 6; and contrarians, 1 5, 160–64, 21 7 Dewey, Orville, 1 72; and attempt to draw boundaries, 182, 1 83, 1 92–94, 21 9; Moral Views of Commerce, Society, and Politics, 1 72; and usury, 244n2; and view of market economy, 167, 171 –72, 1 77–80, 204; and view of wealth, 195–96, 1 98–99 Dickinson College, 43, 1 74 “Discourse on Honesty in Dealing, A” (Bates), 191 division of labor, 3; and dehumanization of worker, 31, 104, 215; in views of clerical economists, 53–58, 87, 97, 1 00–102, 1 30,

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division of labor (cont.) 1 56; in views of contrarians, 1 1 4, 130, 1 52–53, 1 60–61. See also under Smith, Adam Dorr, Thomas W., 1 42 Dunn, John, 27 Duties and Dangers of Prosperity, The (McConaughy), 1 75 “Duties of an American Citizen” (Wayland), 123 Elements of Intellectual Philosophy (Wayland), 1 24 Elements of Moral Science (Wayland), 36, 1 23 Elements of Political Economy (Wayland), 8, 35–36, 60–61 , 74, 1 24, 230n8 Emerson, Joseph, 1 74, 1 76; Christian Economy, 1 74, 1 82, 1 91 Encyclopedia Americana (Lieber), 46 Enlightenment, 24, 1 84 Enlightenment in America, The (May), 229n1 Episcopal, Episcopalian, 40, 41 , 45, 1 75 Essays on Property and Labor (Lieber) 47 evangelical Christianity, evangelicalism, 38, 75 Evensky, Jerry, 225n21 faculty psychology, 1 83–87, 1 95–96, 203, 207–1 1 Federalism, 40 Financial Suggestions and Remarks (Colwell), 110 First Lessons in Political Economy (McVickar), 40, 230n8, 233n1 5 Fitzhugh, George, 1 1 2 Fourier, Charles, 9, 1 51 , 1 52, 242n48 “frameworks,” as defined by Charles Taylor, 14 Free Church of Scotland, 1 76 free trade: as viewed by clerical economists, 36, 43, 45, 47, 56–58, 78–84, 1 00, 1 30, 1 60–61; as viewed by Colton, 1 01 –2; as viewed by contrarians, 1 1 0, 1 1 4–1 8, 130, 1 50, 152–53 French Revolution, and influence on clerical economists, 49–50, 97 frontier: and importance to American economy, 99–1 00, 1 04–5, 1 35; and Panic of 1 837, 205–6 General Theological Seminary, 1 76 Godwin, William, 1 25, 1 51

golden rule, and importance to pastoral moralists, 168–69, 1 82, 1 91 –95, 21 1 “Gospel Creed, A” (Brownson), 1 25 Great Britain. See Britain, Britons greed: and clerical economists, 58–59, 77, 87–88, 209; and Colwell, 1 1 4; and pastoral moralists, 167, 171 , 179, 182, 195–97, 203, 205, 208, 215 Hal´evy, Elie, 75 Hamilton, Alexander, 40 Hard Times, The (Whitman), 1 73 Harrison, William Henry, 1 39 Harvard, 44, 63, 1 72, 173, 1 74, 175 Harvard Divinity School, 173, 1 74 Hecker, Isaac Thomas, 152 hereditary property, as opposed by Brownson, 1 36–38 Herndon, William, 36 Hill, Lisa, 1 79, 225n21 Hilton, Boyd, 75 Hobbes, Thomas, 24 Howe, Daniel Walker, 1 3, 1 84, 186, 245n1 5; Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln, 12–13 Hume, David: and attitude toward religion, 26–28; as viewed by clerical economists, 37, 50 industrialization: and problems in Europe, 9–1 0, 97–98, 100–1 04, 1 1 0–14; as viewed by Stephen Colwell, 1 1 0–12 Industrial Revolution, 24, 26, 31 , 224n1 0 inequality in market-capitalist economy, 96–1 05, 1 26, 1 56, 21 5; as viewed by clerical economists, 96–98, 130, 156; as viewed by contrarians, 1 1 3–21, 1 23–4, 1 28–38, 1 39–42, 145–46, 149, 158–59, 163 Inequality of Individual Wealth (Wainwright), 176–78 Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, An. See Wealth of Nations Introductory Lecture on Political Economy (Vethake), 64 “Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy” (McVickar), 40, 55 “invisible hand,” 1, 24, 27, 1 50, 186. See also Smith, Adam “iron cage,” 5, 1 59, 21 5 Irony of American History, The (Niebuhr), 91

index Jackson, Andrew: Jacksonians, 205–6; and relation to clerical economists, 36, 43, 51 , 229n1 Jefferson, Thomas, 1 , 23, 74 Jeffersonian model, 91 –92 Johnson, Paul, 1 3 Judgments in the House of God (Atwater), 45 Kant, Immanuel, 24 Kierkegaard, Søren, 1 1 9 Kirk, Russell, 240n1 7 Kirwan, Walter Blake, 176, 1 91, 1 93; Seeking Another’s Wealth, 1 76 Kossuth, Lajos, 44 “Laboring Classes, The” (Brownson), 8, 1 39–40, 1 43–44, 1 46–47, 150, 1 51, 1 53, 1 56, 206 laissez-faire economics, 4 Langer, Gary, 25 Leroux, Pierre, 1 44, 1 47, 150, 1 51 liberalism, 2, 26; as viewed by Brownson, 1 47–48; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 95–96, 1 91, 1 94, 1 96 Lieber, Francis, 44, 46–47; Essays on Property and Labor, 47; and international economy as divine plan, 79, 82; Some Truths Worth Remembering, 47, 231 n26; and thoughts on wealth, 58–59; and views of America as exceptional, 99, 1 03–4 Lincoln, Abraham, as influenced by Francis Wayland, 36 List, Frederick, 1 1 0 Locke, John, 1 , 28, 50, 1 74, 1 76, 1 91 Locofocos, 43 Luddites, 9 luxury, as viewed by pastoral moralists, 1 95–201 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1 2, 1 4; and “characters,” 1 5, 1 29, 1 45–46, 1 60, 222n1 5. See also “characters” Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Howe), 1 2–1 3 Malthus, Thomas: 9, 25; and food supply theories, 32–33, 65, 97; and pessimistic views, 31 –32, 41 , 52, 68, 77, 105, 21 7; as viewed by clerical economists, 97–100; as viewed by Colwell, 1 1 8

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mammon: American views of, 3; as biblical term, 1 , 21 3–1 9; as focus of political economy, 33–34, 21 5–1 9; and God in researched work, 7, 1 3; as viewed by clerical economists, 58; as viewed by contrarians, 1 62, 1 68, 176, 217; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 169, 1 71 , 176, 1 99 Mandeville, Bernard, 2 market capitalism, economy: and capacity for good and evil, 3, 4, 1 3, 24, 155, 1 64–65, 1 68, 1 71 , 1 77, 1 92, 194, 1 99, 203–9, 215–1 9; and “characters,” 1 1 , 155, 165; and Christian ethics, 1 –5, 1 0–12, 20–21 , 87–96, 167–69, 1 71 –72, 1 81 –89, 205, 21 1 , 21 4–1 9; and deontology vs. utilitarianism, 1 1 –1 2, 153, 160–64, 168–69; and development in America, 1–6; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 167–69, 171 –80, 181 –89, 1 94, 200–201 , 205–1 1 , 21 4; and virtue ethics, 1 1 –1 2, 1 69. See also political economy market revolution, 2–4, 6–7, 24–25 May, Henry, 36; The Enlightenment in America, 229n1; Protestant Churches and Industrial America, 1 3, 222n1 7, 229n1 ; and views on clerical economists, 50–51, 229n1, 229n2 Mayhew, Elizabeth and Jonathan, 1 75 McConaughy, David, 1 74–75; The Duties and Dangers of Prosperity, 1 75 McCulloch, John Ramsey, 25, 41 , 99, 231 n1 , 231 n1 1 McVickar, John: biography of, 40–41 , 46–47, 228n21; and Christian rationale for political economy, 9, 35–36, 40, 59, 61, 89–90, 1 60; and defense of political economy as science, 67, 71, 89–90; and international economy as divine plan, 79–80, 81, 83–84; and view of Adam Smith, 26, 230n8; and view of America as exceptional, 98–99; and view of utilitarianism, 73, 92–93; and virtue vs. wealth, 92–95, 1 97–98 McVickar, John, works of: First Lessons in Political Economy, 40, 233n1 5; “Introductory Lecture to a Course of Political Economy,” 40; Outlines of Political Economy, 40, 231n1 ; “Review of Thomas Chalmers’s On Political Economy,” 40, 67 merchants, 3, 26, 51 –52

266

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Metcalf, Relief, 1 25 Meyer, D. H., 51 –52 Middlebury College, 1 74 middle class, 1 3, 1 28 Montchretien, Antoyne de, 224n1 3 Moore, R. Lawrence, 1 3 “Moral Law of Accumulation” (Wayland), 1 93 moral philosophy: and clerical economists, 30–31 , 37, 60–72, 228n1 2; and Colwell, 1 1 5; and political economy, 1 9–20, 29, 60, 21 4–1 5 Moral Views of Commerce, Society, and Politics (Dewey), 1 72 “My Creed” (Brownson), 1 25 Napoleonic Wars, 26 natural theology: and clerical economists, 37–39, 43, 46, 47, 52–53, 56, 60, 66–68, 71 , 74, 82, 91–92, 1 23, 1 56, 1 86, 216–1 7; and Colwell, 1 1 4, 1 1 5, 1 1 7–18 “New System,” 39. See also Wayland, Francis New Themes for the Protestant Clergy (Colwell), 8, 1 1 5, 121 , 123, 1 33 Newton, Sir Isaac, 24, 28, 50, 62, 66–67, 76 New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church (Brownson), 1 26 New York Review, 42 New York University, 36, 1 76 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 91 –92, 241 n24; The Irony of American History, 91 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 28 Noll, Mark, 71 North American Review, 44, 1 73 Nott, Rev. Eliphalet, 38, 41 , 1 24 O’Connor, Michael J. L., 50–51, 227n6, 229n2 On Political Economy in Connexion with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society (Chalmers), 70, 71 On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (Ricardo), 31 –33 Outlines of Political Economy (McVickar), 40; 231 n1 Owen, Robert, 9, 26, 1 25, 151 Pack, Spencer, 209 Paine, Thomas, 50, 74, 1 1 5 Paley, William, 66–67 Panic of 1 837, 1 26, 1 73, 1 75, 1 96, 205–9, 21 1

parable of unjust steward, 213–1 9 pastoral moralists: and “adapted” response, 95–96, 1 68–69, 1 89, 21 1 ; and attempt to create boundaries, 10, 168–69, 181 –83, 1 88, 1 92–97, 200–201 , 203–7, 207, 21 1 , 214, 21 5; and “characters,” 172; and Christian rationale for ideas, 8, 1 1 , 12, 1 5, 1 7, 1 67–69, 1 79–80, 1 98–99, 219; and competition, 191 –94, 200, 208; and das Adam Smith Problem, 1 74, 208–1 1 ; and liberalism, 1 91–94, 196–97; and luxury and speculation, 1 95–99, 200–201 , 203–8; and self-interest, 1 83–89, 192–94, 209–1 1 ; and sidestepping issues, 1 1 , 169, 181 –82, 1 97, 219; and view of economy as divinely ordained, 1 77–78; and view of market capitalism as means to virtue, 1 79, 1 98–99, 219; and views of market-capitalist economy, 1 67–69, 1 71 –80, 1 81 –89, 194, 200–201 , 205–1 1 , 21 4; and virtue ethics, 1 5, 169, 1 78, 203, 207, 21 8–29. See also individual pastoral moralists Peabody, Andrew Preston, 1 73–74, 177, 198; Views of Duty Adapted to the Times, 1 73 Perils of Riches, The (Wayland), 1 87–88 Petty, William, 224n13 Physiocrats, 25 Piety Essential to Man’s Temporal Prosperity (Boardman), 1 73 political economy: as amoral theory, 9, 20–21 , 23–26, 30, 97, 1 1 3–1 4, 1 1 7, 171 , 204, 207; in antebellum colleges, 20, 35–44, 228n21; as championed by clerical economists, 8–9, 1 9–21 , 35–47, 49–58, 59–72, 73–84, 98–105, 1 1 3, 1 56–57, 1 61–62, 164, 1 68, 208–9; and compatibility/incompatibility with Christianity, 9, 20–21, 26, 33, 35, 43–46, 58, 59–72, 73–84, 87–98, 1 1 3–21, 130–35, 1 61–64, 171 –72, 183–89, 200–201 , 208–9, 21 4–1 9; as “dismal science”/“redeeming science,” 9, 33, 35; and moral philosophy, 1 9, 29, 60; origins of, 19–20, 23–26, 224n13, 225n1 8; as true science, 62–72; as viewed by contrarians, 1 1 3–21, 1 30–38, 206–7. See also Malthus, Thomas; market capitalism; Ricardo, David; Smith, Adam Political Economy as Applied to the Present State of Britain (Scrope), 41

index Political Economy, Its Objects, Uses and Principles (Potter), 41 Politics for American Christians (Colwell), 121 Polytechnic College, 43 Position of Christianity in the United States in Relation with Our Political Institutions, The (Colwell), 121 Potter, Alonzo: biography of, 41–42; and Christian rationale for political economy, 35, 41 –42, 1 30, 208; and education, 42, 89; Political Economy, Its Objects, Uses and Principles, 41 ; and trade unions, 41–42, 1 34; and view of Adam Smith, 52, 53; and view of America as exceptional, 102–3 Potter, Sarah Maria, 41 poverty, in developing market economy, 96–98, 1 03–5, 1 1 3 Presbyterian, Presbyterians, 45, 1 09, 1 73, 174 Princeton, 43, 45, 64 Princeton Theological Seminary, 1 09, 1 73 Principles of Political Economy (Vethake), 43, 61 , 65 private property, 2, 26; as viewed by Brownson, 1 35–38; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 174, 1 91–92, 1 97 profiteers, as viewed by clerical economists, 59 protectionism: as viewed by clerical economists, 36, 45, 56–58; as viewed by Colton, 101 –2; as viewed by contrarians, 1 09, 1 50 Protestant Churches and Industrial America (May), 1 3, 229n1 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber), 4 Protestantism, and contribution to market capitalism, 4–5, 7, 94–95 Public Economy for the United States (Colton), 45 Quesnay, Franc¸ois, 25 Race for Riches, The (Arnot), 1 76 radicalism, radicals: and clerical economists, 49–52, 229n1 ; and contrarians, 1 1 0–12, 1 29, 1 39 Reid, Thomas, 50 “Review of Thomas Chalmers’s On Political Economy” (McVickar), 40, 67 Ricardo, David, 9, 25; and “iron law of wages,” 31–33, 97–98; On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 31 –33; and

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pessimistic attitudes, 31 –32, 41 , 52, 77, 105; as viewed by clerical economists, 97–100. See also Malthus, Thomas; Smith, Adam Rice, Rev. Luther, 38 Richards, Sarah Bell, 1 09 Rights of Labor, The (Colton) 45 Ripley, George, 1 51 Rodgers, Daniel, 74, 1 61, 230n1 3 Rothschild, Emma, 27 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 50 Ruffner, William Henry, 120 Ruskin, John, 33 Ryan, Thomas, 140 Saint Simon, 1 51 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 1 28, 1 42–43 Scotland, 24–25, 224n1 1 Scottish common sense philosophy: and clerical economists, 37–39, 43, 46–47, 52, 60, 68, 71 , 1 23 156; and contrarians, 1 1 5 Scrope, George Poulett: Political Economy as Applied to the Present State of Britain, 41 Second Great Awakening, 7, 14, 1 25, 1 57 Seeking Another’s Wealth (Kirwan), 176 self-interest: and Adam Smith, 1 –2, 30, 55, 81 , 94, 21 6; and American philosophy, 1 , 4, 88; and role in faculty psychology, 1 83–87, 208–1 1 ; as viewed by clerical economists, 93–96, 1 85–87, 208–1 1 ; as viewed by contrarians, 1 85, 218; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 1 83–87, 192–93, 1 99, 203, 207–1 1 Sellers, Charles, 7, 1 3 slavery, 6–7; as viewed by Colwell, 1 1 0–12, 235n8 Smith, Adam: and birth of political economy, 23–26, 224n1 3; and contrarians, 9, 1 1 3–1 4, 1 52–53, 1 62; and division of labor, 53–58, 1 02, 1 60; and ideas about natural order, 52–58, 1 77, 21 7; and morality of economic system, 1, 2, 9, 23, 28–33, 179; and religious skepticism, 26–31, 33, 225n21 ; as seen by clerical economists, 1 1 , 26, 28, 50–59, 62, 67, 94, 130, 156; and self-interest, 1 , 2, 4, 30, 55, 81, 94, 1 97, 208–1 1 , 21 6; and sympathy, 30, 94, 208–1 1 ; and validity of theories, 62–72. See also Hume, David; “invisible hand”; Theory of Moral Sentiments; Wealth of Nations

268

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social “character.” See “character” “social control” school, 1 3, 222n1 7 socialism, socialists: as viewed by clerical economists, 50, 1 1 5, 1 1 9–20; as viewed by contrarians, 1 1 0, 1 1 9–20, 1 51. See also Christian Socialism Some Truths Worth Remembering (Lieber), 47, 231 n26 Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Taylor), 1 3 South, Southerners, 7, 46, 1 1 0–1 1 South Carolina College, 46 Southey, Robert, 33 Specie Circular, 205–6 speculation, speculators, 3; and role in Panic of 1 837, 205–6; as viewed by clerical economists, 59, 209; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 1 95, 1 97–201 , 204–5, 207–8 Steuart, Sir James, 224n13 Stewart, Dugald, 50 Tawney, R. H., 4 Taylor, Charles, 1 2, 1 3, 14–1 5, 1 45–46; Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, 1 3 Taylor, George Rogers, 2 Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith), 2, 208–1 1 ; and clerical economists, 30–31; and morality, 26–30, 94. See also das Adam Smith Problem; Wealth of Nations Thompson, E. P., 30 Torrens, Robert, 25 trade unions, 42, 1 30 transcendentalism, transcendentalists, 1 26, 1 27, 1 51 –52, 206 “True Progress of Society, The” (Atwater), 45 True Whig, 45 Union College, 38, 41 , 1 24 Union League, 1 09 Union of 1 707, 24, 224n1 1 Unitarianism, Unitarians, 43, 1 26, 1 27, 1 72–73 unity of truths, as viewed by clerical economists, 61–72 universalism, 1 25, 1 27 University of Berlin, 46 University of Edinburgh, 70 University of Pennsylvania, 41 –42, 43, 1 09–1 0 University of South Carolina, 228n21 upper classes, 1 3

usurers, 3, 244n2 utilitarianism: and American ambivalence toward, 74–75, 1 61–62, 230n1 3; in Britain, 73–75; and Brownson, 153, 163; and “characters,” 1 1 , 1 2, 160; and clerical economists, 1 5, 53, 59, 61, 69, 73–84, 92, 103–4, 160–64, 185–86, 208–9, 214–1 6; and pastoral moralists, 1 68–69, 198, 207 Utopians, 50 Van Buren, Martin, 1 39, 140, 141 Vethake, Henry, 42–43; and Christian rationale, 35, 43, 82, 88, 160; and defense of political economy as science, 64–66, 68, 76; and education, 42–43, 89; Introductory Lecture on Political Economy, 64; Principles of Political Economy, 43, 61 ; and speculation, 197; and utilitarianism, 74, and views of America as exceptional, 98–100; and views on virtue, 88–89 Vethake, John, 43 Views of Duty Adapted to the Times (Peabody), 1 73 Villeneuve-Bargemont, Alban de, 1 1 3 Viner, Jacob, 225n21 virtue: in development of American society, 1 1 , 88, 94–95; as inconsistently used by clerical economists, 87–96, 208–9; as viewed by Brownson, 128, 1 48; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 1 71 , 1 79, 1 88, 1 98–99, 208 virtue ethics, 1 1 , 1 2, 184, 216; and pastoral moralists, 15, 1 69, 1 78, 203, 207, 218–1 9 Voltaire, as viewed by clerical economists, 50 Wainwright, Jonathan Mayhew, 175–78; Inequality of Individual Wealth, 176–78 Wainwright, Peter, 1 75 Washington College, 43, 175 Wayland, Francis: biography of, 16–1 7, 35–40; and “character,” 16–1 7; as clerical economist, 1 9, 35–36, 40, 69–71, 1 1 3, 1 23–24, 1 37; and ideas of progress, 56–58; as influential educator, 36–42, 157; and international economy as divine plan, 76–79, 81–82; as pastoral moralist, 182–83, 1 87–89, 193, 196–98; and views on Adam Smith, 52, 56–57, 230n8; and views of America as exceptional, 99, 103; and views on virtue, 87–88, 92, 160, 208;

index and Whig party, 36–37. See also “New System” Wayland, Francis, works of: “Duties of an American Citizen,” 1 23; Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, 124; Elements of Moral Science, 1 23; Elements of Political Economy, 8, 35, 60, 61 , 1 24, 1 83; “Moral Law of Accumulation,” 1 93; The Perils of Riches, 187–88 wealth: as viewed by clerical economists, 58–59, 77, 87–96, 209, 21 6; as viewed by pastoral moralists, 171 , 1 75, 1 88–89, 1 93, 1 95–97, 1 99, 207, 21 0 Wealth of Nations (Smith), 1 , 24, 25, 26, 54; and clerical economists, 30–31, 1 56; and Industrial Revolution, 224n1 0; and morality, 28–33, 225n21 ; and religious skepticism, 27; and sympathy, 30, 94, 208–1 1 . See also das Adam Smith Problem; political economy; Theory of Moral Sentiments Weber, Max, 69, 1 59, 208, 21 7; and Protestant contribution to capitalism, 4–5, 94–95, 1 85, 1 86; Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 4

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Webster, Daniel, 46 Whig Party: and Brownson, 139–41 , 144, 1 50; and clerical economists, 36–37, 42, 45–46, 21 6, 229n1 Whig Review, 173 Whitman, Jason, 1 72–73, 205; The Hard Times, 173 Wilentz, Sean, 1 3 Williams College, 172 Witztum, Amos, 21 0 women’s suffrage, as viewed by clerical economists, 45 working class: and Alonzo Potter, 41 –42, 102–3; and suffering due to market capitalism, 13, 1 1 0–1 4, 1 23–24, 1 56, 21 5; and theories of by Ricardo and Malthus, 32–33; as viewed by Brownson, 1 26, 1 27–38, 146–47, 150–51 , 1 53, 156; as viewed by clerical economists, 1 02–5, 1 56; as viewed by Colwell, 1 1 0–1 4, 1 1 8–21 , 1 56 Wright, Frances, 1 25 “worldly asceticism,” 4, 186, 208 Yale, 36, 45, 173, 1 75