Wordsworth in America and the Nature of Democracy

Abstract

D URING the post-Revolutionary decades, as the northern United States began to shift from an agrarian ex-colony into an industrial capitalist nation, country life and rural pursuits came to play a very specific role in the evolving selfdefinition of the region's ruling class. As Federalist urban elites went about building large-scale manufacturing facilities and financial institutions, they felt increasingly pressed to overcome the anti-commercial prejudices of the stalwart Jeffersonians who remained dominant in the countryside. So these new businessmen set out to occupy their enemy's high ground-by purchasing and settling large agricultural estates. On these model farms, they not only won ribbons for innovative agricultural techniques, but, more important, they harvested a rich crop of positive associations with rural life. Such benefits included the Puritan affirmation of a productive calling, the physiocratic idea that agriculture formed the true foundation of national prosperity, and the agrarian notion of virtuous producers defending the nation against luxury and vice. These country-seat Federalists fashioned themselves benevolent leaders, whose rationality and