My latest essay covers David Hackett-Fischer, Walter Russell Mead, and Colin Woodard.
Fischer shows that each of these four cultures had a different concept of liberty. For the Puritans, it was “ordered freedom,” which meant the rule of law, but laws could reflect strict community standards and hence become “an instrument of savage persecution.” For the cavaliers, it was “hegemonic freedom,” which meant that individual rights were clearly articulated and strongly protected, but these rights varied by social class, so that they “permitted and even required the growth of race slavery.” For the Quakers, it was “reciprocal freedom,” which meant equality of all under the law, but theirs was “a sectarian impulse which could be sustained only by withdrawal from the world.” In the backcountry, it was “natural freedom,” which meant resistance to foreign influences (including government) but “sometimes dissolved into cultural anarchy.” The Constitution and the Bill of Rights can be viewed as a delicate compromise that attempted to incorporate these disparate notions.
I read Albion’s Seed years ago, and just finished Woodard’s book. A few thoughts:
1. I’ve seen that Woodard has responded to the thesis that the urban/rural divide is the major dividing point with a claim that his own multi-nation approach is stronger. I need to see how he makes his case, as bare assertion isn’t sufficient. Surely the major cities of the US are shaped by their dominant nation, but it seems that the current division between the “Northern” and “Southern” (“Dixie”) alliances finds most major cities siding with the “north” (the confederation of Yankeedom, Left Coast, and New Netherlands) rather than the “south.”
2. I’d also look for closer analysis of societal institutions. The Northern Alliance surely dominates higher education, the entertainment and high tech sectors. Through these areas of dominance, their influence crosses all national boundaries.
3. I’d like to see more balanced treatment of the Southern Alliance from Woodard’s account. Is it really adequate to see it as the dominance of the southern “slave lords” on every level? If you’re a member of the Northern Alliance nations, it’s tempting to explain away opponents as stupid (uneducated) and evil.
4. Woodard makes the distinction between Outward and Inward religion, with the former at home in Yankeedom & the latter in Dixie. Yes, this works for some of the time. But how do we account for the secularism that has come to define the north? They still have the drive to perfect the world from the puritans, but this has been mostly divorced from any account of God or religion. And where/how did the Puritan emphasis in coercing the country/world into its likeness shift to the South?