J A F A O OHN DAMS AND THE EAR OF MERICAN LIGARCHY John Adams AND THE FEAR OF American Oligarchy LUKE MAYVILLE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton & Oxford COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu The quotation on page v is copyright © 2014 by Garry Wills and was first published in the New York Review of Books. Frontispiece and jacket art from The New York Public Library. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “John Adams,” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 13, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-2fd6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99 All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mayville, Luke, 1985– author. Title: John Adams and the fear of American oligarchy / Luke Mayville. Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016003613 | ISBN 9780691171531 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Adams, John, 1735–1826—Political and social views. | United States—Politics and government—1783–1809. | United States—Politics and government—1775–1783. | Oligarchy—United States. Classification: LCC E322 .M36 2016 | DDC 973.4/4092—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016003613 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Adobe Caslon Pro Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 TO MY MOTHER The proof that we live in a plutocracy is not that the wealthy get most of the prizes in our society, but that majorities think that is how it should be. —GARRY WILLS, New York Review of Books, January 2014 Or do you suppose that the regimes arise “from an oak or rocks” and not from the dispositions of the men in the cities, which, tipping the scale as it were, draw the rest along with them? —SOCRATES, in Plato’s Republic The Distinction of property will have more influence than all the rest in commercial countries, if it is not rivalled by some other distinction. —JOHN ADAMS, notes on Mary Wollstonecraft’s Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 ONE A Perennial Problem 23 TWO The Goods of Fortune 58 THREE Sympathy for the Rich 95 FOUR Dignified Democracy 124 CONCLUSION American Oligarchy 148 Notes 155 Bibliography 193 Index 205