"The Shock Isn't That the Fragile Union Broke Apart so Spectacularly in 1861 but That It Didn't Happen Sooner"

"If union inspired ambivalence, democracy brought fear and trembling. Taylor makes clear that 'contrary to popular mythology, most of the founders did not intend to create a democracy. Instead, they designed a national republic to restrain state democracies.' Both Federalists and Republicans were keenly aware that all great republics in history eventually collapsed, and this impelled them to consider how little democracy they could get away with to inoculate the fledgling nation against certain ruin. After 1815, as more states expanded the franchise among white men, this democratic inoculation threatened to metastasize into a democratic insurgency. Not all anxious observers shared Edgar Allan Poe's verdict that 'Democracy is a very admirable form of government—for dogs.' They agreed, however, that a botched transition from republicanism to democracy—even one that excluded women and Blacks—would quickly degenerate into what the Richmond Whig in 1835 referred to as 'Mobocracy.'"

At The American Scholar, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen reviews Alan Taylor's American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850.