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“JACOBINS” AT PRINCETON: STUDENT RIOTS, RELIGIOUS REVIVALISM, AND THE DECLINE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, 1800–1817*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2015

CHARLES BRADFORD BOW
CHARLES BRADFORD BOW*
Affiliation:
Faculty of History, Underwood International College, Yonsei University E-mail: Bradford.Bow@yonsei.ac.kr
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Abstract

This essay considers how American Enlightenment moralists and Evangelical religious revivalists responded to “Jacobinism” at the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, from 1800 through 1817. At this time, disruptive student activities exemplified alleged American “Jacobin” conspiracies against civil society. The American response to “Jacobins” brought out tensions between two different competing intellectual currents at the College of New Jersey: a revival of Christian religious principles led by Princeton trustee Reverend Ashbel Green and, in contrast, the expansion of Samuel Stanhope Smith's system of moral education during his tenure as college president from 1795 through 1812. As a moralist, Smith appealed to Scottish Common Sense philosophy in teaching the instinctive “rules of duty” as a way to correct unrestrained “passions” and moderate “Jacobin” radicalism. In doing so, Smith developed a moral quasi-relativism as an original feature of his moral philosophy and contribution to American Enlightenment intellectual culture. Green and like-minded religious revivalists saw Princeton student uprisings as Smith's failure to properly address irreligion. This essay shows the ways in which “Jacobinism” and then the emerging age of religious revivalism, known as the Second Great Awakening, arrived at the cost of Smith's “Didactic Enlightenment” at Princeton.

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 2016 , pp. 93 - 122
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Thomas Ahnert, Michael Ratnapalan, Robert Beachy, Martin Wagner, Paul Tonks, the journal's anonymous reviewers, and the journal's coeditor Charles Capper for their thoughtful and generous comments in preparation of this article.

References

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8 In response to unprecedented crowds who gathered in a “revival of religion” during the early 1740s (later known as the “Great Awakening”), the Synod of Philadelphia supporting orthodox Calvinistic views (Old Side) and the Synod of New York endorsing religious revivalism (New Side) effectively split American Presbyterianism. As a testament to the Princeton's New Side attachments, its first five presidents (Jonathan Dickinson, 1747; Aaron Burr Sr, 1748–57; Jonathan Edwards, 1758; Samuel Davies, 1759–61; and Samuel Finley, 1761–6) first made their reputations as religious revivalists. See Kidd, Thomas, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, 2007), 43–7Google Scholar; Westerkamp, Marliyn, Triumph of the Laity: Scots–Irish Piety and the Great Awakening, 1625–1760 (Oxford, 1988), 15–30Google Scholar.

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12 On 28 January 1787, Smith joined the American Philosophical Society and read An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, which he published the following year in Britain and America. Smith also had deep family connections to Princeton, which influenced the early reception of his system of moral education. Smith's father Robert and his younger brother John served on Princeton's Board of Trustees. His father was a close friend of Samuel Davies (college president 1759–61), Samuel Finley (college president 1761–6) baptized Stanhope Smith, his maternal uncle Samuel Blair Jr was the interim college president (1766–8), and John Witherspoon (college president 1768–94) became his father in-law in 1775.

13 See May, Enlightenment in America, 307–62. This approach contributes to the new historiography described in Dixon, John, “Henry F. May and the Revival of the American Enlightenment: Problems and Possibilities for Intellectual and Social History,” William and Mary Quarterly, 71/2 (2014), 255–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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18 Princeton 1796 Charter amendments, Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University AC120. Hereafter Mudd Manuscript Library will be referred to as PUA. For a discussion of Smith's curriculum reforms see Bow, Charles Bradford, “Reforming Witherspoon's Legacy at Princeton: John Witherspoon, Samuel Stanhope Smith and James McCosh on Didactic Enlightenment, 1768–1888,” History of European Ideas, 39/5 (2013), 650–69Google Scholar.

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21 William Paterson quoted in Mills, W. Jay, ed., Glimpses of Colonial Society and the Life at Princeton College, 1766–1773 (Philadelphia, 1903), 16–17Google Scholar.

22 Smith to Benjamin Rush, 27 Feb. 1792, Princeton University Library Special Collections MS14429. Hereafter Princeton University Library Special Collections will be referred to as PUL.

23 Elkins, Stanley and McKitrick, Eric, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 (Oxford, 1993), 309–10Google Scholar.

24 Smith to Wachmuth, 2 June 1794, PUL MS12364.

25 Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1791) illustrated that French revolutionary principles drew from America's revolutionary example. See Appleby, Joyce, “America as a Model for the Radical French Reformers of 1789,” William & Mary Quarterly, 28/2 (1971), 267–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larkin, Edward, Thomas Paine and the Literature of Revolution (Cambridge, 2005), 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the French appeal to the American Revolution see Marienstras, Elise and Wulf, Naomi, “French Translations and the Reception of the Declaration of Independence,” Journal of American History, 85/4 (1999), 1299--1324, at 1299CrossRefGoogle Scholar. After receiving accounts of the 1793–4 “Reign of Terror,” Americans, however, questioned whether the French Revolution resembled the ideals of American republicanism. See May, The Enlightenment in America, 223–5.

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28 See Porcupine, Peter (aka William Cobbett), History of the American Jacobins, Commonly Denominated Democrats (Philadelphia, 1796), 18Google Scholar; Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 220.

29 Webster, Noah, Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (New York, 1806), 179Google Scholar.

30 Jedidiah Morse, Thanksgiving Sermon in 1798, 67, quoted in Stauffer, Vermon, New England and the Bavarian Illuminati (New York, 1918), 232Google Scholar. As shown in a series of letters between Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State (1789–1797), and Edmund Charles Genet (also known as Citizen Genet), minister of the French Republic, the French Republic pursued repayment of America's debt in both funds and military support. During this diplomatic mission in America between 1793 and 1794, Genet actively recruited Americans to support “Jacobinism.” Washington remarked to Congress that Genet and, in turn, France attempted to “involve us in war abroad, and discord and anarchy at home.” George Washington, “A message of the President of the United States to Congress relative to France and Great-Britain: delivered December 5, 1793” (Philadelphia, 1793), 3.

31 Smith to Jedidiah Morse, 24 Feb. 1799, PUL MS12370.

32 See Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 221; Schlereth, The Age of Infidels, 9.

33 Green, Ashbel, The Life of Ashbel Green, V.D.M., Begun to be written by himself in his eighty-second year and continued to his eighty-fourth. Prepared for press at the author's request by Joseph H. Jones (New York, 1849), 31Google Scholar.

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35 Board of Trustees Minutes and Records, Vol. Two, 9 April 1800, PUA, AC120, 39. Hereafter the Trustees Minutes will be referred to as TM.

36 Smith to Jonathan Baynard, 10 March 1802, PUL MS2164.

37 Ibid.

38 Novak, Rights of Youth, 16–19.

39 Cotlar, Seth, Tom Paine's America: The Rise and Fall of Transatlantic Radicalism in the Early Republic (Richmond, VA, 2011), 98Google Scholar.

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41 See Onuf, Peter, Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Richmond, VA, 2000), 87–98Google Scholar.

42 Smith to Jonathan Dayton, 22 Dec. 1802, PUL C0028, original emphasis.

43 Democratic–Republican values at this time were best expressed in Thomas Jefferson's Second Presidential Inaugural Address on 4 March 1805, reprinted in Jefferson: Political Writings, ed. Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball (Cambridge, 1999), 530--34, at 532.

44 Smith, Lectures, 1: 260.

45 Ibid.

46 Circular letter to parents, 3 Sept. 1799, PUL MS9976. Novak, Rights of Youth, 21.

47 Smith, Lectures, 1: 301.

48 Ibid., 302

49 According to Reid, “the testimony of our moral faculty, like that of the external sense, is the testimony of nature, and we have the same reason to rely upon it.” Reid, Thomas, Essays on the Active Powers of Man (Edinburgh, 1788), 238Google Scholar. Witherspoon taught that “the moral sense implies also a sense of obligation, that such and such things are right and others wrong; that we are bound in duty to do the one, and that our conduct is hateful, blamable, and deserving of punishment, if we do the contrary.” Witherspoon, John, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, ed. Green, Ashbel (Philadelphia, 1822), 21Google Scholar.

50 Smith, Lectures, 1: 304.

51 Ibid., 310.

52 Ibid., 314.

53 Ibid., 314–15.

54 Ibid., 318.

55 Ibid., 322.

56 Ibid., 323.

57 Ibid., 315.

58 See Haakonssen, Knud, ed., Thomas Reid on Practical Ethics (Edinburgh, 2007)Google Scholar.

59 Smith, Lectures, 2: 106.

60 Ibid., 103.

61 TM, 31 Dec. 1801, 58.

62 TM, 1 Jan. 1802, 59.

63 TM, 2 Jan. 1802, 60.

64 Ibid.

65 Edwards to Biddle, 29 Jan. 1802, PUL C1289.

66 Smith quoted in “Memoirs of George Strawbridge,” PUL, in Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson, Princeton, 1746–1896 (Princeton, 1946), 126Google Scholar.

67 Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, 2: 32.

68 Smith to Baynard, 10 March 1802, PUL MS2164.

69 TM, 7 March 1802, 62, original emphasis.

70 TM, 16 March 1802, 63.

71 TM, 19 March 1802, 69.

72 Wertenbaker, Princeton, 1746–1896, 127.

73 Circular letter to parents and trustees, TM, 19 March 1802, 69–71; Novak, Rights of Youth, 16–21.

74 Smith to Baynard, 10 March 1802, PUL MS2164.

75 Smith to Rush, 27 Feb. 1792, PUL MS14429.

76 Circular in TM, 19 March 1802, 69–71; Smith to David Ramsey, 29 Sept. 1805, PUL MS239.

77 Samuel Stanhope Smith, “The Progress of Vice,” PUL MS8035.

78 Smith, Lectures, 1: 208–9.

79 TM, 27 Sept. 1804, 148.

80 Noll, Mark, America's God (Oxford, 2002), 567CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith, 221.

81 Hatch, Nathan, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, 1989), 14Google Scholar; Novak, Rights of Youth, 58–78; Schlereth, Age of Infidels, 45–109.

82 Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, 2: 133.

83 Ibid.

84 William Plumer to Joseph Jones, Sept. 1848, quoted in Life of Ashbel Green, 503.

85 Green to Griffin, 13 Jan. 1800, quoted in Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 156.

86 Green, Life of Ashbel Green, 323.

87 Ashbel Green, “Address of the Trustees of the College of New Jersey, to the Inhabitants of the United States,” 18 March 1802, quoted in Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, 2: 37.

88 Smith, Lectures, 1: 232.

89 TM, 28 Sept. 1802, 86.

90 Ibid.

91 TM, 30 Nov. 1802, 119.

92 Samuel Stanhope Smith, “Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion,” lectures taken by an unknown student, PUA AC052, Lecture 1, 1.

93 Schlereth, The Age of Infidels, 9.

94 See Bradbury, Miles, “British Apologetics in Evangelical Garb: Samuel Stanhope Smith's Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion,” Journal of the Early Republic, 5 (1985), 177–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95 Smith, Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion, Lectures 1–4, 2.

96 Plumer to Jones, Sept. 1848, in Green, Life of Ashbel Green, 503.

97 Smith to Green, 24 March 1803, PUL MS12414.

98 Ibid.

99 Smith to Green, 26 Nov. 1803, PUL MS2166.

100 TM, 8 Dec. 1803, 117.

101 Boudinot to Elisha Boudinot, 27 Dec. 1803, quoted in Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 178.

102 Green wrote to Smith of Mr Morris's complaints against his moral philosophy on 13 May 1804. The contents of this missing letter were described in Green, Diary, 13 May 1804, PUL C0257, Box Two.

103 Ibid., 14 June 1804.

104 Hill to Green, 20 Jan. 1804, PUL C0257; Green to John Bradford, Jan. 1804, PUL MS2740.

105 Bradford to Green, 4 Feb. 1804, PUL MS2434. See Sloan, Douglas, The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal (New York, 1971), 164–6Google Scholar.

106 Smith, Lectures, 2: 117–41.

107 Ibid., 119–20.

108 Ibid., 126.

109 Ibid., 123.

110 Green to John Bradford, 1 July 1804, PUL MS2740.

111 Green, Life of Ashbel Green, 353.

112 TM, 23 Sept. 1806, 179.

113 TM, 24 Sept. 1806, 184.

114 TM, 29 Sept. 1806 to 30 March 1807, 189.

115 John Maclean to Ashbel Green, 3 April 1807, PUL MS12175.

116 TM, 25 March 1807, 187.

117 TM, 30 March 1807, 189.

118 Ibid.

119 Maclean to Green, 3 April 1807, PUL MS12175.

120 For a description of how Federalists saw Democratic–Republican values see Read, James H., “Alexander Hamilton's View of Thomas Jefferson's Ideology and Character,” in Ambrose, Douglas and Martin, Robert, eds., The Many Faces of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 2006)Google Scholar.

121 TM, 10 April 1807, 199; on Jefferson's treatment of liberty see Malone, Dumas, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty (Boston, 1962), 302–7Google Scholar.

122 Smith, Lectures, 1: 230.

123 Ibid., 225.

124 TM, 31 March 1807, 190.

125 Meade slightly exaggerated the number of students suspended as 150. The trustee's records indicate that approximately 126 students were suspended. Meade, William, A Memoir of the Life of the Right Rev. William Meade (Baltimore, 1867), 23Google Scholar.

126 See Hall, Claude, Abel Parker Upshur: Conservative Virginian, 1790–1844 (Madison, WI, 1964), 12–14Google Scholar; TM 10 April 1807, 198–9.

127 Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, 2: 80. See Noll, Mark, “The Response of Elias Boudinot to the Student Rebellion of 1807,” Princeton University Library Chronicle, 42 (1981), 1–22Google Scholar.

128 Trustees John Bayard, Rev. William Boyd, and Rev. Alexander MacWhorter died in 1807. John Rodgers, Jonathan Smith, and Azel Roe resigned from the board due to old age. The new trustees included Samuel Bayard, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Samuel Miller, Robert Finley, James Richards, George Spafford Woodhull (Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 240–41). For a more detailed discussion of these newly elected trustees see Noll, Mark, “The Princeton Trustees of 1807: New Men and New Directions,” Princeton University Library Chronicles, 41 (1980), 208–30Google Scholar.

129 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 240–42.

130 Hudnut III, William, “Samuel Stanhope Smith: Enlightened Conservative,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 17/4 (1956), 540--52, at 542Google Scholar.

131 Thompson to Green, 16 Sept. 1807, PUL MS2167.

132 Benjamin Rush to John Montgomery, 5 July 1808, in Letters of Rush, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield, vol. 2 (Princeton, 1951), 970.

133 See, Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 246–53.

134 Alexander, Archibald, The Life Archibald Alexander, ed. Alexander, James (New York, 1854), 314–15Google Scholar.

135 Green, Life of Ashbel Green, 333.

136 TM, 27 Sept. 1809, 375.

137 TM, 12 April 1812, 324.

138 Green, Life of Ashbel Green, 317.

139 Green, Diary, 15 April 1812, PUL C0257, Box Two.

140 Ibid.

141 Smith to Rush, 27 Sept. 1812, PUL C0028.

142 Miller's earlier contribution to American Enlightenment thought and then religious revivalism is an excellent example of the identifiable intellectual and religious transition to the Second Great Awakening at this time. Like Smith, Miller actively promoted literature and science (natural and moral philosophy) as the best way to “progress” American civil society from the 1790s through 1803. See Miller, Samuel, A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century, Containing A Sketch of the Revolutions and Improvement in Science, Arts, and Literature during that Period (New York, 1803), 390Google Scholar. Later in his career as a Presbyterian minister, Miller shifted his emphasis to the belief that revealed religion was the only source to prevent “human ruin.” Miller, Samuel, A Sermon Delivered at the Ordination of William Goodell, William Richards, and Artemas Bishop (Boston, 1822), 25Google Scholar.

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144 Green to Archibald Alexander, 30 Sept. 1812, PUL C0257, added emphasis.

145 Quoted in Gillett, Ezra, The History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1864), 223 nGoogle Scholar.

146 Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, 2: 134.

147 Green, Life of Ashbel Green, 542.

148 Miller, June 1847, quoted in Green, Life of Ashbel Green, 611.

149 Novak, Rights of Youth, 157.

150 Green, Life of Ashbel Green, 358.

151 Ibid.

152 Ibid., 358–64.

153 Green, Diary, 19 Jan. 1817, PUL C0257, Box Two.

154 The board and Green expelled fourteen students who rioted. Green, Diary, 21 Jan. 1817, PUL C0257, Box Two.

155 TM, 4 April 1815, 427.

156 Novak, Rights of Youth, 162.