Citizen Nation

This week we’ve been focusing on the political culture and ideas of the founding generation in the late 18th century and the development of American democracy and how citizenship was experienced in the early 19th century.

For Wed 9/19, please read (and bring) Keyssar Chapters 2 and 3, and be prepared to discuss them in class. Consider these questions –

In what ways was “democracy ascendant” (to use Keyssar’s phrase) in the early republic?

The founders greatly feared “faction” and political parties, yet a robust party structure emerged as a key component of American politics in the early 19th century. How can we explain this?

By 1850, who could and who couldn’t vote and what was the overall trend in voting rights? Expansion? Contraction? To what extent had the colonial values of “virtue, deference, property and consensus” persisted in the new nation?

During the colonial era, most agreed that “landless and propertyless” men could not be trusted with the vote; what does the struggle in Rhode Island tell us about the link between industrialization and voting rights?

What kinds of sources is Keyssar using to answer these questions?