| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Moral Visions and Material Ambitions: Philadelphia Struggles to Define the Republic, 1776–1836. By A. Kristen Foster. (Lanham: Lexington, 2004. x, 205 pp. $65.00, ISBN 0-7391-0758-5.)

A. Kristen Foster has written an impassioned jeremiad, a declension thesis for the postrevolutionary era. Her argument is illustrated by the following quotations:

Some believed that they had struggled and their compatriots had died for equality in a yeoman's republic, while others trusted that they had fought for the right of the individual to pursue his own path to happiness and wealth. (p. 4)

The very definition of community-mindedness, the heart of the republican ideal, changed, and the nostalgic, moral vision of a classical republic gave way to the material ambitions of eager young entrepreneurs. (ibid.)

This moral commitment to republicanism soon eroded in favor of the material ambitions of liberal individualism. (p. 151)

Foster argues that by 1776 America possessed a class structure that allowed elites, laborers, and the middle class each to articulate a class consciousness distinct from the others. Revolutionary upheaval permitted them to pursue their different visions. Laborers demanded a moral economy and even "economic justice, or guaranteed incomes" (p. 136). Elites and ultimately the middle class sought unshackled ambition and a market economy. They felt that "the individual should put his needs before those of the nation ... because this would make the commonwealth stronger" (p. 5). Following E. P. Thompson, Foster posits that moral economy and market economy battled, and market economy triumphed.

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