Abstract
The first section of this chapter describes the American gentry that arose in the colonial period and that played the lead role in the creation of the United States. The narrative includes a discussion of the decline of the gentry’s direct political influence in the Jacksonian era, and considers the gradual transformation of the American gentry into the various elites which constitute the contemporary national Establishment. Special attention is paid to the educational aspect of this change, particularly as it occurred in the country’s colleges and universities. The chapter concludes with a comparison of the gentleman to his technocratic descendant.
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Notes
- 1.
James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat or Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America (Cooperstown: H. & E. Phinney, 1838) 121.
- 2.
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist (The Gideon Edition) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001) 91.
- 3.
Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911) 234.
- 4.
Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, The Federalist, 112.
- 5.
Ibidem, 357.
- 6.
Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams , Vol. II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959) Chapter 15, Document 61.
- 7.
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) 88.
- 8.
John H. Kautsky, “Contexts of Conservatism, Liberalism, and Socialism,” Society, Vol. 33, No. 3 (March/April, 1996): 49.
- 9.
Matthew Arnold, Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, ed. William Savage Johnson (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1913) 482–483.
- 10.
By way of comparison, it’s worth noting that in the United Kingdom the elimination of property requirements for all white males did not occur until the Fourth Reform Act of 1918, nearly a century after the abandonment of similar qualifications in the United States.
- 11.
Andrew Jackson, “First Annual Message,” December 8, 1829.
- 12.
Andrew Jackson, “Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the United States”, July 10, 1832.
- 13.
Cooper, The American Democrat, 91.
- 14.
Ibidem, 92.
- 15.
Ibidem, 121.
- 16.
As quoted in Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Longman, 1980) 212.
- 17.
Thomas R. Dye and Harmon Zeigler, The Irony of Democracy: An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics, 10th ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996) 429.
- 18.
Dewey, Art as Experience, 21.
- 19.
Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, The Federalist, 273.
- 20.
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, various editions, paragraph 207.
- 21.
Ibidem, paragraph 296.
- 22.
Russell K. Nieli, “From Christian Gentleman to Bewildered Seeker: The Transformation of American Higher Education”, Academic Questions, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2007): 314.
- 23.
Laura Jimenez, Scott Sargrad, Jessica Morales, and Maggie Thompson, “Remedial Education: The Cost of Catching Up”, Center for American Progress (www.americanprogress.org), September 2016.
- 24.
Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910) 388.
- 25.
Ibidem, 352.
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Mitchell, J. (2019). American Meritocracy and the Rise of Specialized Elites. In: On the Decline of the Genteel Virtues. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20354-2_6
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