Demagoguery and Mental Independence in James Fenimore Cooper’s Political Writings

Abstract

AbstractThis essay examines James Fenimore Cooper’s two key nonfiction texts, Notions of the Americans (1828) and The American Democrat (1838), for their appraisal of the process of opinion formation in democracies. Cooper is concerned with the mental dependence and conformism that characterizes American democracy. In particular, he worries that public-spirited individuals will avoid participating in the public sphere for fear of defamation by irresponsible newspaper editors and that public discourse may be captured by partisans, levelers, and economic speculators. His response is to appropriate for the burgeoning democracy the concept of “gentleman,” a term that he now applies to the public-spirited democrat whose persuasive, nondemagogic rhetoric defends equal rights to life, liberty, and property. The true American democrat is the moderate individual, neither sheepish nor presumptuous, who speaks and acts in defense of equal freedom.