Public Culture and Economic Liberalism in Post-Revolutionary Northern Virginia, - 1820

Abstract

July 4, 1802 found the residents of northern Virginia and Alexandria in a celebratory mood. In an oration given on that day, A.W. Grayson, scion of the Grayson family of Prince William County and a member of the Alexan- dria Debating Society, articulated in effusive rhetoric the confidence and enthusiasm of the region's inhabitants. Grayson began by reviewing the cause of the American Revolution, the battles of the war, and the political consequences of independence—the creation of a "republican government" situated happily between the extremes of "overbearing aristocracy" and "li- centious jacobinism." More revealing, however, was his focus on the social and economic consequences of the Revolution. Grayson argued that inde- pendence had enabled the United States to establish a "commercial inti- macy" with "the different nations of Europe." The result was "a rapid progress" of American trade; American merchants now "unfurled . . . their canvas" sails on "the shores of distant nations." Manufacturing, too, had "been rap- idly increasing" since the Revolution. And agriculture no longer "languished" as it had before independence, but now the "honest husbandman" enjoyed a well-deserved "domestic felicity." Underlying all these successes was the "enterprizing [sic] spirit of our citizens." "The people of this country," Grayson noted, "are daily opening" the nation's "latent sources of wealth." As a re- sult, Americans could "look forward to the day when America will hold a primary not secondary rank among the nations of the earth." In short, the Revolution had spurred economic development in America (and Virginia), because it enabled all (white male) citizens to pursue their economic self- interest. Here was the message of economic liberalism expressed in its most fundamental terms, and in a way which all politically active residents of the region could understand.1