Reviewed by Lawrence A. Peskin | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.1

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Reviewed by Lawrence A. Peskin | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 62.1 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Lawrence A. Peskin, Morgan State University

Moral Visions and Material Ambitions: Philadelphia Struggles to Define the Republic, 1776–1836. By A. Kristen Foster. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004. 216 pages. $65.00 (cloth).
The literature on the political and economic ideology of early America is a remarkably theoretical one by the standards of United States history. Grand concepts such as republicanism and liberalism, and philosophers such as Locke, Trenchard, Gordon, Smith, and even Machiavelli dominate this discourse. A. Kristen Foster takes a more empirical approach to this topic by focusing on changes in political economy within a single city during the revolutionary and early national periods.	1
Foster's premise is that, though on the surface Revolutionary-era Americans appeared unified, the "war itself had not been about a shared republican vision; it was in fact about negotiated republicanism, a series of ongoing debates about democratic government and social equality" (6). After the war any lingering republican unity dissolved by the advent of the market revolution, which divided Philadelphia into communitarian-minded radicals and free-market liberals. To some extent this analysis echoes Gordon Wood's description of a republican revolution that was notable for the way in which it unwittingly unleashed liberal impulses, but Foster argues that economic forces independent of the Revolution itself sparked the move toward self-interested individualism.	2
Foster's first chapter offers a brief view of Philadelphia's prerevolutionary history before describing the two republican factions that emerged during the war. The "radical" faction supported the "simple government structures" (26) of the 1776 state constitution and stressed the importance of "communal virtue" (28), whereas the traditional group opposed the 1776 constitution and favored a more hierarchical social order. Out of the crucible of the 1779 debate over price fixing, when, amid wartime stagflation, laborers' appeals for relief led to the violent Fort Wilson riot, a third, still more radical, coalition emerged. These workingmen favored a moral economy, further splintering and complicating Philadelphia republicanism and prompting a conservative backlash against the 1776 constitution.	3
The second and third chapters follow republicanism into artisans' workshops. Foster compares two labor conspiracy trials to show changes in the artisans' ideological universe. She views the 1806 cordwainers' trial as an example of the conflict between the developing free market, laissez-faire ideology of the masters and their lawyers and the moral economy of the more radical communitarian-minded workers. Foster argues that the 1827 trial of twenty-four journeyman tailors demonstrates continuing class conflict and the growing triumph of liberal individualism. One man who resisted this transformation was William Heighton, radical leader of Philadelphia's Mechanics Union of Trade Associations (MUTA) formed in 1827. Yet even the MUTA, Foster concludes, "no longer looked to republican ideology as a solid moral foundation for their interests," but instead "turned to an ideology based on their knowledge of new market relationships" (104). In short, even laborers now reasoned from self-interest rather than from traditional republican concerns about virtue.	4
The fourth chapter revisits the Revolutionary years and the postrevolutionary political conflicts to demonstrate the evolution of a moderate middle-class republicanism that "added possessive individualism to the list of republican virtues" (114). Initially sympathetic to more radical republicans, moderates were shocked by the violence of the 1779 Fort Wilson riot. Moderates and radicals briefly reunited to form the Democratic-Republican party in the 1790s, but they soon split into New School and Old School factions. The moderate new schoolers "stressed the primacy of private property and hard work" (135) rather than calling for radical economic restructuring. The apotheosis of this position was Mathew Carey, publisher and political economist, who advocated "aggressive charity" (141) rather than new economic rights for Philadelphia's poor.	. . .

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