A Republic of Men. Mark E. Kann
capacities required for citizenship, in particular, they are able to use their reason to sublimate their passions” and “internalize the universal rules of socio-political order.” Male theorists believed that women, in contrast, were driven by passions that clouded their reason, subverted their commitment to universal justice, and legitimized their exclusion from politics.37
We can read the indirect influence of gender opposition between the lines of writings that populated the state of nature with rational men who voluntarily chose to enter civil society and establish a government of law. American authors usually assumed that women’s inability to harness reason and discipline passion precluded them from participation in political life. Women were nowhere to be found in most states of nature. Theophilus Parsons was unusual because he was explicit about why political manhood required female exclusion. Parsons emphasized the importance of wisdom, learning, and discretion in politics, and favored a presumption that all males over twenty-one years had ample intelligence to participate. Simultaneously, he favored the rule that all women be viewed “as not having sufficient discretion,” and he disqualified them from politics. True, he argued, women had “no deficiency in their mental powers.” However, it was dangerous for them to develop reason and practice politics lest “promiscuous intercourse with the world” ruin “the natural tenderness and delicacy of their minds, their retired mode of life, and various domestic duties.”38 Political manhood meant ruling women for their own good.
Gender opposition was also embedded in the psychodynamics of early American political thought. Christine Di Stefano argues that modern political theorists constructed “configurations of masculinity” as misogynist attempts to achieve “clean and ultimate release from the (m)other.” Male thinkers desired women but feared dependence on them. They projected their “irresolute masculinity” into political theories that thickened the connection between political manhood and female subordination. Similarly, Kenneth Lockridge argues that eighteenth-century American males constructed images of manhood based on contempt for women. Men desired women for sexual pleasure and reproduction but feared their engulfing sexuality and malignant power. Reacting as if “patriarchy is in imminent danger of becoming matriarchy,” they expressed insecurity and rage by forging a misogynistic public identity based on intimidation and control of women.39 American men had powerful unconscious passions and gendered assumptions that infused patriarchal meaning into public phrases such as “All men are created equal.”
We can glimpse male misogyny in the common usage of the term effeminacy. Linda Kerber suggests that Americans equated “effeminacy” to “timidity, dependence, and foppishness.” For example, Samuel Adams opposed “effeminate” refinements that seduced men into the self-indulgence and corruption associated with disorderly women. Samuel Williams criticized profligate men for creating “an emaciated feeble race, degraded by effeminacy and weakness,” that was “unmanly” and “incapable of manly exertions.” Only men who mastered female vices could ward off tyranny and establish a republic. However, not all uses of effeminacy conveyed gender opposition or misogyny. John Adams hinted at gender similarity when criticizing both “my own sex” and “American ladies” for “luxury, dissipations, and effeminacy.” And Mercy Otis Warren was not expressing misogyny toward women when criticizing General William Howe for enjoying “effeminate and reprehensible pleasures ... in the arms of a handsome adulteress” rather than doing his civic duty.40
We can also detect gender opposition in founding-era metaphors. Speakers and writers often defined political manhood as a matter of controlling symbolic female figures who were typically blamed for public disorder. The figures included “Fortune” (a coy woman who needed to be tamed), “Fancy” (an enchantress), “Trade” (a lady who needed to be courted), and “Popularity” (an adulteress). Some oppositional metaphors conveyed a mixed message. Thomas Paine portrayed the Revolution as the struggle of a maturing American male against a grasping British mother, and as a conflict pitting patriots defending manly freedom against corrupt governors hoping to seduce them back into female dependence. Paine also portrayed the Revolution in terms of all-male rivalry. He considered it a filial revolt against a despotic royal father, as well as the case of a wealthy ward fighting off a covetous guardian. Political manhood opposed womanhood, but it also opposed male tyranny and avarice, and an assortment of male failings.41
Quite often, Americans defined political manhood in opposition to African slavery. Judith Shklar suggests that a white male’s sense of personal dignity, social worth, and citizenship was largely a function of distinguishing himself “from slaves and occasionally from women.” She emphasizes that citizenship was mostly conceived as a denial of slavery. White males measured their public worth by their distance from slave status. The main marker of that distance was the right to vote, which functioned as “a certificate of full membership in society” that had a “capacity to confer a minimum of social dignity.” Men without the ballot saw themselves and were seen by other men as second-class citizens approaching “the dreaded condition of the slave.”42
Northern writers regularly suggested that political manhood required opposition to slavery. James Dana argued that “our liberty as men, citizens, and Christians” demanded that “we set ourselves to banish all slavish principles” and “unite to abolish slavery.” Southern writers often suggested that white political manhood was strengthened by its juxtaposition to slavery. David Ramsay wrote that white men’s “spirit of liberty” was nurtured by daily reminders of the degradation of slavery; Timothy Ford believed that white men felt stimulated to defend liberty “to avoid being confounded with the blacks”; John Taylor added that white men’s affection for liberty was heightened by “the sight of slavery.” If white manhood contrasted with slavery, what was the gender identity of male slaves? Enslaved black males had no clear gender identity. They were mostly seen as outsiders lacking the manly reason to discipline their passions and the manly freedom to provision and protect their families. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s “American Farmer” was typical: he abhorred slavery but could not imagine including African slaves among the mix of immigrants who could “become men” within the new race “called Americans.”43
Often, Americans defined manhood in opposition to boyhood. A mature man was a self-supporting adult who defended liberty, fulfilled family responsibilities, and governed women. His opposite was the “boy,” “libertine,” or “bachelor of age” who was lustful, impulsive, and avaricious rather than disciplined; self-centered instead of family-oriented; and socially destructive, not politically constructive. This contrast was standard fare in political discourse. For example, Noah Webster portrayed the French Revolution as a contest between the mature males who originally fought for “liberty and the rights of men” and later Jacobin rebels who united “the littleness of boys” with “the barbarity of Goths.” Activists criticized political opponents by likening them to “giddy youth” or by patronizing them as “restless, vigorous, luxurious youth prematurely emancipated from the authority of a parent.”44 The idiom of male rivalry was potent because Americans believed that a “man” deserved the rights of men, but a “boy” needed to be governed.
Sometimes, manhood was not an oppositional concept but a conjuncture of female and male characteristics. American culture considered both men and women to be disorderly creatures, disposed to seduce and be seduced. Writers criticized women for manipulating male passions and men for preying on female innocence. They worried about young women being corrupted by rogues and naive male citizens being abused by demagogues. Also, both sexes seemed to share many vices. Benjamin Franklin noted women’s intemperance and men’s “more frequent” intemperance, as well as women’s fickleness and men’s “wavering and inconstant” ways. Overall, however, commentators thought men were the more disruptive sex. The coquette’s vices mainly threatened her own well-being. Hannah Webster Foster’s novel The Coquette tells of a “young, gay, volatile” girl who rejected a virtuous suitor for “a designing libertine” only to suffer a premature death. By contrast, the libertine epitomized what Alexander Hamilton called men’s “ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious” nature which imperiled female innocence, family integrity, the bonds of society, and legitimate political authority.45
A disorderly female subdued