3. Rich and Poor¶
Core Argument¶
Here, the chapter argues that the formal political democracy won in the American Revolution was from its inception a hollow vessel, its egalitarian rhetoric contradicted by the immediate consolidation of a wealthy oligarchy. Property qualifications, literacy tests, and unequal representation entrenched the power of the rich from the outset, a fact the text substantiates with a quotation from Dan Lacy. The core narrative thrust is that the Jeffersonian ideal of a republic of virtuous, independent small farmers was already a historical anachronism at its moment of conception, rendered obsolete by the very capitalist development the Revolution unleashed. The Louisiana Purchase, presented as the largest land deal in history, is used to illustrate the brutal corollary of this agrarian dream: the expropriation and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, a policy embraced by Jefferson himself, who is quoted as advocating their forced removal into the Rocky Mountains like beasts.
The chapter’s central polemic is directed against the foundational myth of the American Dream—the Whig journalist’s boast of humble origins rising through merit. This is systematically dismantled by presenting a cascade of primary source evidence detailing the horrific conditions of early industrial capitalism. An 1833 appeal from Manayunk workers describes fourteen-and-a-half-hour days in cotton-choked factories, wages insufficient for survival, and the physical destruction of the workforce. Reports from the National Trades’ Union Convention of 1834 are marshalled to depict the “slavery and wretchedness” of 4,000 female operatives in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the “deadly prisons” to which children were condemned. The chapter establishes that class struggle is not an import but an organic feature of the Republic, tracing the first strikes and union formations back to the 1770s and 1780s, and highlighting the use of English common law “conspiracy” charges to crush early trade unions.
The figure of Andrew Jackson is presented as a contradictory fulcrum. He is depicted as a “self-made frontiersman” whose popular victory in 1828 terrified the WASP elite, with Justice Story’s condemnation of the inaugural White House riot as “the reign of King Mob” serving as a key piece of evidence for the ruling class’s deep-seated hostility to democracy. Yet the chapter is careful to puncture the Jacksonian legend. Jackson’s populism is exposed as a hollow alliance between Southern slavocracy and Northern political machines, lacking any coherent program. His signature achievement, the “Indian Removal Act,” is directly linked to the “Trail of Tears,” proving his “People’s Champion” mantle was strictly for white settlers. The “Bank War” is analysed as a utopian, ultimately reactionary attempt to resist the inexorable logic of capitalist development, with the Southern slaveholders’ opposition to the Bank reflecting a deeper contradiction between the progressive industrial North and the retrograde slave South. The chapter concludes by framing the Nullification Crisis and South Carolina’s attempted secession over tariffs as the first rumblings of the Civil War, demonstrating that the unresolved contradictions of the Revolution—class, race, and the conflict between free and slave labour—were already demanding their bloody settlement.