Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750–1850

Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States represents the cooperative effort of a group of American and German scholars to move the historical debate on republicanism and liberalism to a new stage. Until recently, the relationship between republican and liberal ideas, concepts and world views has almost exclusively been discussed in the context of American revolutionary and late eighteenth-century history. While the German states did not experience successful revolutions like those in North America and France, republican and liberal ideas and ‘language’ deeply affected German political thinking and culture, especially in the southern states. The essays published in this book expand the time frame of the debate into the first half of the nineteenth century, applying an innovative and comparative German-American perspective. By systematically studying the similarities and differences in the understanding of republicanism and liberalism in the United States and German states, the collection stimulates new efforts toward a comprehensive interpretation of political, intellectual, and social developments in the ‘modernizing’ Atlantic world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

• Opens the US centered debate on republicanism and liberalism by applying a comparative perspective • Studies the complex interrelationship of republican and liberal ideas in the United States and Germany during the first half of the nineteenth century • Questions still widely held concepts such as ‘American Exceptionalism’ and a ‘German Sonderweg’

Introduction Jürgen Heideking and James A. Henretta; Part I. Overview: 1. ‘Wir nennen’s Gemeinism’ (we call it public spirit): Republic and Republicanism in the German political discussion of the nineteenth century Rudolf Vierhaus; Part II. The Republican World: 2. The concept of the Republic in eighteenth-century German thought Hans Erich Bödeker; 3. Kant’s Republicanism and its consequences Otto Dann; 4. Constitutions, charity, and liberalism in comparative perspective: Germany and the Anglo-American tradition A. G. Roeber; 5. Politics and sentiment: Catharine Macaulay’s Republicanism Vera Nünning; 6. Between Liberalism and Republicanism: ‘manners’ in the political thought of Mercy Otis Warren Rosemarie Zagarri; Part III. The Transition from Republicanism to Liberalism: 7. The Liberal Democratic Republicanism of the first American State constitutions, 1776–1780 Willi Paul Adams; 8. Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys: the emergence of Liberal Democracy in Vermont, 1760–1850 Robert E. Shalhope; 9. The birth of American Liberalism: New York, 1820–1860 James A. Henretta; 10. Republicanism, Liberalism, and market society: party formation and party ideology in Germany and the United States, c. 1825–1850 Paul Nolte; 11. Festive culture and national identity in America and Germany Jürgen Heideking; 12. Charles Follen’s Perception of Republicanism in Germany and the United States, 1815–1840 Edmund Spevack; Part IV. The Logic of Liberalism: 13. ‘The right to possess all the faculties that God has given’: possessive individualism, slave women, and abolitionist thought Amy Dru Stanley; 14. Freedom of contract and freedom of person: a brief history of ‘involuntary servitude’ in American fundamental law Robert J. Steinfeld.