'The people' in nineteenth century American Populism

Nineteenth century American Populism is often portrayed as the heir of an agrarian tradition that began with Thomas Jefferson. From this point of view the “market revolution” (Charles Sellers) that took place during the first half of the nineteenth century is pictured as the fulfillment of Alexander Hamilton’s economic vision against which the Populists stood up in order to defend their traditional agrarian way of life. Again and again the Populists themselves used this narrative. For example Tom Watson, a leading Populist from Georgia, declared in 1894 that Populism “is now and will ever be a fearless advocate of the Jeffersonian Theory of Popular Government, and will oppose to the bitter end the Hamiltonian Doctrines of Class Rule, Moneyed Aristocracy, National Banks, High Tariffs, Standing Armies and formidable Navies – all of which go together as a system of oppressing the people.” If scholars speak about the ideological origins of nineteenth century Populism at all, this antagonism is usually approved. Against this conventional interpretation, the present paper seeks to show that the emergence and the demands of American Populism in late nineteenth century is strongly related to the changing concept of “the people” within American political thought. Whereas the Founding Fathers – and most of all Jefferson – used the term in a highly inclusive and therefore harmonizing way, the Populists experienced the growing social cleavages that took place after the Civil War, which led them to a conflictual concept of “the people”. For Jefferson (other prominent revolutionaries like Tom Paine hold a similar opinion), the supposed ancestor of late nineteenth century Populism, the decisive difference within the political realm lay between the governed and those who govern; the Populists on the other hand portrayed the conflict between “millionaires” and “tramps” as being central, which suggests that they took socioeconomic hierarchies more seriously. Against this background it becomes clearer why the political demands and the vision for a democratic society differed substantially between Jefferson (“laissez faire, laissez passer”) and the Populists (interventionist state) – although the later often appealed to Jefferson. From my point of view these differences are not just a more or less arbitrary transformation of the classical Jeffersonian doctrines but the result of a different look at the social and political world. Therefore I claim that it is not accurate to picture the Populists as a rearticulation of Jeffersonian Republicanism as has been done so far. Instead Populism should be treated as an independent stream within American political thought. A byproduct of doing this may be a clearer distinction between American social movements that can be linked to the ‘original’ Populists and those who are just using a populist rhetoric.