Tom Paine's America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic

by Seth Cotlar

Winner of the 2012 James Broussard Award for Best First Book from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

Tom Paine's America explores the vibrant, transatlantic traffic in people, ideas, and texts that profoundly shaped American political debate in the 1790s. In 1789, when the Federal Constitution was ratified, "democracy" was a controversial term that very few Americans used to describe their new political system. That changed when the French Revolution--and the wave of democratic radicalism that it touched off around the Atlantic World--inspired a growing number of Americans to imagine and advocate for a wide range of political and social reforms that they proudly called "democratic."
One of the figureheads of this new international movement was Tom Paine, the author of Common Sense. Although Paine spent the 1790s in Europe, his increasingly radical political writings from that decade were wildly popular in America. A cohort of democratic printers, newspaper editors, and booksellers stoked the fires of American politics by importing a flood of information and ideas from revolutionary Europe. Inspired by what they were learning from their contemporaries around the world, the evolving democratic opposition in America pushed their fellow citizens to consider a wide range of radical ideas regarding racial equality, economic justice, cosmopolitan conceptions of citizenship, and the construction of more literally democratic polities.
In Europe such ideas quickly fell victim to a counter-Revolutionary backlash that defined Painite democracy as dangerous Jacobinism, and the story was much the same in America's late 1790s. The Democratic Party that won the national election of 1800 was, ironically, the beneficiary of this backlash; for they were able to position themselves as the advocates of a more moderate, safe vision of democracy that differentiated itself from the supposedly aristocratic Federalists to their right and the dangerously democratic Painite Jacobins to their left.
(-- Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University, author of Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic )

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, American, Politics, 18th Century

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tom Paine's America was this week's book for my early American readings class, and, for what it's worth, it's the easiest to read volume that we've had so far. It's short, written in an almost light fashion, and flies by facts so quickly that it's almost fun to read. That same speed and breadth, however, is the book's biggest problem. Big issues and historical events are brought up and dispensed with within two pages, and though much of this book focuses on the publishing industry and how it connected to the development of political thought in post-Revolutionary America, the reader is given only brief and superficial summaries of the pamphlets and books mentioned. It feels strange to say that I wish the book I was required to read had been longer, but in this case, more information would have been very welcome.

I'm a bit sleepy as I write this, so I apologize if any of my review has been confusing. As a whole, I did enjoy Tom Paine's America, and I look forward to discussing it in class. It provides a good explanation of how political thought worked in the 1790s. However, some of the material things and historical events discussed are brought up so quickly and then disregarded that this book feels like an extended summary of a longer volume.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The notion of voting as the highest form of civic engagement in American democracy can be a frustrating one for activists, organizers, and change-makers who work in the years between elections to influence government and society. Seth Cotlar’s “Tom Paine’s America” does a wonderful job at calling attention to a moment in the early 1790’s, after the American Revolution, when more radical forms of democracy were real considerations for the nation’s future, including transnational conceptions of citizenship and rights, governmental functions dedicated to economic equality, and a more inclusive public sphere that would provide an extra-electoral mechanism for ordinary citizens to influence policy. Although these radical forms of democracy were pushed out of the realm of political possibility by Jeffersonian Democrats and the Federalists who opposed them in the aftermath of the election of 1800, they form a fascinating transatlantic tradition that is well worth looking into.

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a moment following the American Revolutionary War, much of it preserved in newspapers and pamphlets, when a radically democratic and egalitarian spirit was in the air, and regular working people viewed themselves as eligible participants in public affairs, more than simple voters.

There was a moment that America argued about the nature of democracy in the new republic and the role of citizen, as the French Revolution turned to terror, Jefferson rose to the presidency, Thomas Paine came to be shunned and “Jacobin” became a catch-all phrase for removing ideas from political discourse, much as “socialist” is used by some today.

Cotlar constructs this moment through contemporary writings, showing the moment America chose a course that led to the present two-party system.

[Kali]

Not going to lie, this made me mildly concerned about government/America/freedom, all that! Crazy!