The Institutional Preservation Of Jeffersonian Republicanism: A Study On Thomas Jefferson's Conception Of The Ward System

Jefferson's conception of the ward system sprouted at the beginning of the American Revolution as a public educational system for the cultivation of both the republican citizens qualified for participation in self-government and the natural aristocrats as their fellow citizens' wise and virtuous representatives. After the Revolution, Jefferson gradually felt the urgency to create a grass-roots institution to provide not only the school education but also the opportunity of direct political participation for all republican citizens. Hence he proposed to divide each Virginian county into smaller wards so as to facilitate the citizens' direct participation in local public affairs. He hoped that the citizens' active participation would nourish and strengthen their spirit of self-government, ensure their freedom and happiness, and prevent the new republic from corruption and degeneration. Thus Jefferson's conception of the ward system eventually evolved into the institutional preservation of Jeffersonian republicanism. The present thesis adopts Iseult Honohan's six basic elements of republicanism as a theoretical framework for the study of Jefferson's conception of republicanism, which is the theoretical basis of his conception of the ward system: (1) Jefferson's conception of virtue, characterized by his optimism about the universality of the moral sense and the people's capacity of self-government; (2) Jefferson's conception of freedom, characterized by his synthesis of both negative liberty and positive liberty; (3) Jefferson's criterion of the republican government and the scope of the republic, characterized by his synthesis of both participation and representation; (4) Jefferson's conception of the shaping of republican citizens, characterized by the synthesis of school education and active participation in public affairs; (5) Jefferson's conception of the material preconditions of the republic, characterized by his primary concern for the economic independence and political freedom of both the individual and the nation. The study of the contents and functions of the ward system explores the close link between Jeffersonian republicanism and Jefferson's conception of the ward system from three aspects: (1) Jefferson's advocacy of universal free education for the cultivation of republican citizens qualified for self-government; (2) Jefferson's proposal for the division of each county into wards to facilitate every citizen's direct participation in self-government; (3) Jefferson's advocacy of the cultivation of the natural aristocrats, who were supposed to fulfill the commission of representation in Jefferson's design of the four-tiered structure of the republican government.Through the study of the close link between Jeffersonian republicanism and the ward system, the present thesis concludes that the nature of Jefferson's conception of the ward system is the institutional preservation of Jeffersonian republicanism.