William Graham Sumner, Andrew Jackson, and the Threat of the Individual

• In Event: Sources of Restraint in the American Republic

Abstract

William Graham Sumner is often thought of as the Progressive Era’s strongest champion of the unencumbered individual. Sumner has long been regarded, following Richard Hofstadter’s account, as “one of America’s preeminent and influential social Darwinists” (Hofstadter 1955; Robinson 2003, 451). However Sumner scholars have increasingly pushed back against the use of the label “social Darwinist” with regard to Sumner (Byrne 2010, 575; Robinson 2003; Shone 2004, 701; Bannister 1992; Paul 1988). Sumner undoubtedly advanced an aggressive case for the individual, but his position cannot justly be reduced to a simple opposition to all obligations or restraints on individualistic action that is often taken from Sumner’s concern for the “Forgotten man.” This paper examines Sumner’s extended historical accounts of the Administration of Andrew Jackson and the American Revolution (Sumner 1986, 1914, 1918) in order to further complicate his treatment as a social Darwinist and to illuminate the former’s formulation of the correct balance between society and the individual. While Sumner’s political thought is usually distilled from the shorter essays he wrote over the course of his life, in 1896 he authored a 400-page biography of Andrew Jackson. Developed from ideas considered in earlier lectures, the biography presented Andrew Jackson’s daring and capacity for success in the ruthless competition of all against all – the very values that he praised in the “forgotten men” of the industrializing United States (Cf. Robin 2011, 30) – as grave threats to political freedom. Treating Sumner as a political thinker deeply engaged with and influenced by American history allows for a new portrayal of this important figure as a political thinker concerned with the threats posed to the individual by populism and democracy. But it also highlights Sumner’s preoccupation with the threat that individuals could pose to the republican order – a threat that necessitated public-minded “Forgotten men” to enter into, and shape, the political realm. Far from seeking to absolutely free the individual from the State, the historically-minded Sumner saw an important individual obligation to maintain the State arising from the potential for populism. The paper concludes by extracting from Sumner’s work such a framework for understanding the challenge of, and potential solution to, populist threats to democratic government.

Author

• Simon Gilhooley, Bard College