John Taylor of Caroline: Pastoral Republican. By Robert Shalhope (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1980. Pp. viii, 304.).

The Early Republican period of U.S. history included many of the great Founders. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all survived to see the seeds of the Early Republic sown. Madison lasted long enough to watch the democratic impulses managed by the founders grow into a tsunami of popular support for a western hero, Andrew Jackson. More than a few newcomers joined the pantheon of American political legends. Calhoun, Clay, and Webster made their names among the first generation of American political leaders, but historiography overlooked equally important figures that laid the groundwork of the great political questions the Jacksonians argued over. When he died in 1824, John Taylor of Carolina represented the Tertium Quids. Robert Shalhope paints his man as a true agrarian. Taylor and the Quids believed in the pastoral idea; the United States worked best when prosperous Anglo-American farmers formed the catalyst of the American electorate and interpreted the United States Constitution strictly. Taylor considered himself the scion of pure American republicanism. Any use of federal power offended him, and he wrote pamphlet after pamphlet upholding the idea of republican citizenship. Even Jefferson’s policies seemed tyrannical to Taylor, who incidentally never saw African chattel slavery as intrinsically inconsistent with his interpretation of human liberty. Taylor transmuted English manor pastoralism into a specific brand of republicanism adopted en masse by Virginians, and even a few Americans from the Mid-Atlantic States.

Shalhope’s book disappointed scholars hoping for a biography on the entirety of Taylor’s life. The author sticks to politics and political theory. But culture never lurks far in this monograph. Taylor lived during the last half of the eighteenth century and experienced a massive transformation of his native colony (and later state). Taylor experienced firsthand the decline of the power of Virginia’s Tidewater aristocracy, a historical process seized on by Rhys Isaacs and William Freehling in their Transformation of Virginia and Road to Disunion, respectively. Taylor’s chronology seemed to take him out of discussions on the Sectional Crisis, but in fact Taylor became one of the first virulent southern partisans. He railed against government legislation appearing to favor the growing industrial interest of New England and the North. Much of his venom alienated him from fellow Republicans. While some Quids compromised with Federalists, Taylor continued to assault the American political milieu. He wrote extensively, emerging as a major intellectual force in the Republican movement. His worked appeared reactionary, even by the standards of his contemporaries. By the time the United States engaged Britain in the War of 1812, Taylor warned his fellow southerners (and especially planters) that the industrial and financial power centered in northern cities created a dangerous new aristocracy essentially built on paper. Other Virginians and southerners shared Taylor’s fears of a nouveau riche elite transforming American society, but more pressing concerns pushed him to the political background. During the war tensions in Congress ran high. Taylor attempted to build support from other like-minded planters, but to no avail. Apart from treasonous New England, Republicans overlooked their differences in order to find political unity in the face of both a British invasion and economic privations.

In the aftermath of the Battle of New Orleans Taylor again enjoyed popularity and prominence. His philosophy rested on an antiquated but emotionally powerful idea of a planter South rapidly disappearing. But the Missouri compromise, tariffs, and the incorporation of the Southwest Territories raised the battle flags of the South. Taylor threw himself into the fray, and in the process became a leading defender of southern rights. Tragically, Taylor himself represented a heart-breaking transformation. Virginia’s founding generation, imbued with the ideals of the Revolution and even willing to discuss the status of slaves, descended into the abyss of southern sectionalism and obduracy. Taylor never lived to see the fruits of his obsession with the pastoral idea of his youth. If he had, one wonders how ideal he might have though it. 

Miles Smith                                                                            Texas Christian University

John Taylor of Caroline:  Pastoral Republican. By Robert E. Shalhope.  (Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, c.1980.  Pp. x, 304.  $19.50, ISBN 0-87249-390-3.)
 
 Shalhope analyzes and critiques the early political thought of the fledging United States through the writings of Virginian statesman John Taylor.  Robert Shalhope is the George Lynn Cross Research Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma.  He specializes in Early American History, focusing on American political culture from 1760-1876.  His analysis of John Taylor's political ideologies focuses heavily on Taylor's writings from 1793 until his death in 1824.  The book does not portend to be biographical, but rather to enlighten the reader on the mindset and formation of political ideologies in the new republic of the United States.  Shalhope endeavors to illuminate the development of Taylor's political theories, which were based on the moral character of the people and an agrarian lifestyle.  Through the use of perspectivism, that is, an analysis "grounded in the belief that reality is always filtered through the human mind, yet it also maintains that the mind is invariably historical," Shalhope's study of Taylor leads to a "better understanding of the interrelationship between his personal life" and "social environment" (9,11).   For the historian this interrelationship is critical for an understanding of the social, cultural, and political intersections during the Early Republic.  John Taylor's life as a Virginian planter specifically elucidates the mores and values of the South.

 The details of John Taylor's life are sparse, but for this intellectual study the omission is understandable.  Shalhope utilizes Taylor's developing political and social ideologies to illustrate the dichotomy of machine versus the garden and its effect on the formation of republican political values throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  At the time of Taylor's death he was still enveloped in America's pastoral identity despite the formation of a "machine culture."  The pastoral mindset in Jeffersonian democracy depended on the moral convictions of the agrarian population.  Jefferson embraced the belief that the yeoman farmer created the foundation for America's democratic principles. But while Jefferson actively molded and compromised political ideologies within the governmental structure, John Taylor remained true to the purity of republicanism.  He viewed the pastoral life as a "symbol of nature, free from European corrupt materialism" (43).

 Taylor's writings afford historians an opportunity to examine the basis for his strong beliefs in the autonomy of the states, a weak central government, and financial stability through a debt-free society.  Many of Taylor's first impressions were formulated during his service in the Revolution.  He witnessed mismanagement, poor leadership, and corrupt practices which led him to believe that government "must be carefully watched and restricted, it did not constitute a dynamic force for change in society" (66).

 During the ratification of the Constitution Taylor upheld the validity of the Articles of Confederation.  He believed that the states should retain the power to affect their own communities and feared that the federal government would fall prey to regional influences.  More importantly, he feared the infiltration of New England's economic capitalism, thereby destroying the sacred values and morals of Southern agrarian life.   In 1810 Taylor began writing essays under the pseudonym “Arator” in the hopes of spurring agricultural reforms.  These essays illustrate his pastoral attitudes.  The Arator, which was eventually published in book form, discussed the ideal agrarian society.  Taylor believed “agriculture provided ample subsistence, exercise, and health for the body and mind by combining a thorough knowledge of the real affairs of life with a necessity for investigating the arcana of nature” (134).  The Arator espouses the moral virtues of a pastoral life and the natural transference of these intrinsic values into the framework of the government. These ideologies remained important to Taylor throughout his entire life and in 1814 he published Inquiry to further expound on the principles of pastoralism and the role of the government.
 
Inquiry challenged the notion of the separation of powers within America’s governmental structure.  Taylor believed the formation of political parties endangered the republican experiment and argued for “radical divisions of power” (153).  He watched with trepidation as the aristocratic few increased their power and sought regional interests.  The New England area, in Taylor’s mind, had strayed from the virtues and morals of pastoralism and allowed manufacturies, contracts, loans, banks, and “an infinite number of inferior tricks to get money” cloud their republican sensibilities (134).  He hoped that by publishing the Arator and Inquiry Americans would be awakened to the true foundation of a virtuous government.  Taylor believed the American people needed to realize the futility in deserting agriculture “to reap a harvest of wealth and power without labor” (137).

 Increasingly alarmed by the assault on the agrarian lifestyle, Taylor served as U.S. Senator and in the Virginia General Assembly when beseeched by his fellow contemporaries.  Despite his desire to devote all his energies to his plantations and agricultural experimentations, Taylor believed in service to one’s country when called upon.  This also gave him the opportunity to utilize the public forum to vocalize his ideologies.  The assault against the South’s institution of slavery caused him great concern.  Taylor spent a great deal of time defending the “peculiar institution.”

 Taylor viewed slavery as a necessary evil and believed that the North’s wage earner actually lived a more disparate life than the blacks toiling on Southern plantations.  He also feared that free blacks, in conjunction with northern agitation, would unnecessarily disrupt the normally peaceful balance between master and slave.  Therefore Taylor was a proponent of colonization and actively participated in the African Colonization Society.  Free blacks hurt agriculture because they were an unproductive class and diminished the utility of slaves.  Taylor’s views about slavery represented southern ideologies concerning the inferiority of blacks and the necessity of their labor to ensure the virtues of pastoral life.

 Shalhope’s analysis of John Taylor’s writings and political activity illustrates the sources of the opposing ideologies present during the early republic.  The clashing philosophies and ideologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were steeped in the struggle to come to terms with the growing modernity of America.  Taylor’s political views represented a large segment of society, but the expanding role of the government, judicial system, and merchant interests began to envelop what had been the mainstay of American society-agriculture.  His fears of unchecked political corruption, loss of personal freedoms, and moral integrity fueled his pastoral dreams and served as the impetus for his virtuous agrarian life. Taylor’s actions, speeches, and writings illustrate the ideological struggles of the Early Republic and how one man tried to affect the negative assault on republican virtues.

Liz Nichols