| This dissertation traces and examines the republican nature and sources of British Radical Whig ideology during the Augustan Age and its subsequent influence and development in America during the 1790s. An understanding of this radical dissent, specifically the form of literary opposition politics that developed in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is essential to a full appreciation of the Democratic-Republican Societies that emerged in America after the ratification of the Constitution. Their radical political and educational philosophy was informed by a number of dissenters in England.; While few of these Societies' members were politicians, many of them were dissenting teachers and theologians striving to create a more progressive, humanitarian, and enlightened society. Their ideas were also influenced by classical and modern republicanism, particularly the works of Aristotle and Machiavelli, and by the "Common Sense" philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. This historical-philosophical analysis helps explain why the Democratic-Republican Societies opposed many of the policy initiatives implemented by the Federalist administrations of Washington and Adams. Like Jefferson, these societies advocated both a system of publicly funded and locally controlled education for all classes and a broadening of the franchise. Standing to Jefferson's ideological left, however, they advocated a much more democratic political agenda, including attempts to create a permanent organization of popular dissent directed against the federal government and an educational philosophy based on a dialectical and democratic approach to learning. |
