Beginnings of American Populism

Greenleaf's New York Journal &c. Extra ... The Democratic Society of this city having received last evening the papers accompanying this, were so well pleased with the general sentiments they contain that they passed an unanimous vote for having them printed in a Supplement ... The Principles of Formation and Regulation of the Associated Democratic Society in the county of Chittenden, state of Vermont.

New York: Thomas Greenleaf, April 30, 1794.

Price: $1,800.00


About the item

Vol. XLVIII, No. 35. 2pp. Folio. Beginnings of American Populism. Minor browning, usual folds. Brigham, C.S., p. 646. See Schoenbachler, Matthew. “Republicanism in the Age of Democratic Revolution: The Democratic-Republican Societies of the 1790s.” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 18, no. 2, 1998, pp. 237–61.

Item #346645

The populism of the French Revolution arose in the nascent United States largely in the formation of Democratic Societies. "In their brief career, the societies and their activities provoked considerable controversy. By organizing public or semi-public discussions of political matters, issuing resolutions and addresses to the people, and remonstrating to local and national leaders, the societies challenged Federalist notions of an electorate at a safe remove from their representatives. Branded as 'self-created' and blamed for the Whiskey Rebellion, the societies very soon came under withering attack and by 1796 most of them had disbanded ... Nevertheless, the Democratic-Republican Societies left behind an altered political landscape. By serving as the first media of organized popular political dissent in the new republic, the Democratic Republican Societies expanded the boundaries of poltiical participation, helping to play out the logic of popular soverignty ... the societies forced for the first time a discussion of the place and limites of legitimate poltiical opposition in a republican society" (Schoenbachler).

The present newspaper extra, evidently paid for by the Democratic Society of New York, i.e. the Tammany Society, prints the Principles, Regulations and Resolutions of the Associated Democratic Society of Chittenden Vermont – often quoted as one of few such published records of a Democratic Society from the period. According to Adelson the document was also printed within the Patriotic Register and the Diary (Adelson, “The Vermont Democratic-Republican Societies and the French Revolution,” Vermont History, XXXII [1964], 3–23).

See the letter from Nathaniel Chipman to Alexander Hamilton, June 9, 1794 (The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 16, February 1794 – July 1794, ed. Harold C. Syrett. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972, pp. 465–470) for a detailed response to this newspaper extra, in which Chipman swears to Hamilton that he had nothing to do with it.