The dissolution of a Republican: Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784--1815
Item
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Title
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The dissolution of a Republican: Daniel Waldo Lincoln, 1784--1815
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:361f1b4d9164:10456
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identifier
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10710
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Creator
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Dresser, Rebecca M.,
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Contributor
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Andrew W. Robertson
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Date
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2010
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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American history | Biographies | Early Republic
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Abstract
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Recent scholarship on the first generation of Americans born after the Revolution has focused on the entrepreneurial spirit and individualism of young people eager to create a nation of equal opportunity. The rise and spread of a democratic polity couched within an expanding liberal economy shaped new definitions of self and position. For Daniel W. Lincoln the second son of Levi Lincoln, the prominent Democratic-Republican of Massachusetts, the new cultural and political landscape brought contradictory and unsettling consequences. As an inheritor of the Revolution and a Republican, he outwardly espoused his father's principles and championed a country of equal laws, equal rights, and equal opportunity for every man. Socially, however, he was conservative, a closet cultural Federalist, who preferred deference, philosophy and poetry to politics and partisanship. For an elite Republican in Massachusetts such as Daniel Lincoln, there were few likeminded souls who shared his sensibilities.;The tension between the equality intrinsic to Jeffersonian ideology and the elitism Daniel naturally gravitated toward left him a lonely melancholic and progressively more out of synch with his peers. He increasingly turned to alcohol for relief with disastrous consequences. Throughout his life Daniel tried his best to exemplify those values which he claimed to revere, but his inability to control his drinking abrogated these standards, embarrassed and disappointed his father, and alienated him from the respect and affection of his peers. He died of alcohol-related illness when he was only thirty-one.;Daniel Lincoln's story is more than a case study of nineteenth century failure. He succeeded professionally as a lawyer and Republican orator. He had a thriving law practice in Boston as well as in Portland, Maine. Based on over 250 letters Daniel wrote to his family and friends, this dissertation provides an unusually intimate look at the effect of changing nineteenth century definitions of deference, class, gender and politics. Daniel Lincoln's letters chronicle a new perspective of a nation in transition and add to the richness and complexity of the historical synthesis of the early American republic.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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History
