Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1988

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

History

Major Professor

William Bruce Wheeler

Committee Members

Paul Bergeron, Michael Fitzgerald, Charles Johnson

Abstract

This dissertation is more than a biography of Oliver Wolcott Jr. It probes the question of what motivated those men who helped build our national political and economic system in the revolutionary and early national periods.

Oliver Wolcott Jr. and the "primary" leaders of our nation-building, men such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, are oftentimes portrayed as nationalists. To a certain extent, this is accurate. Yet national allegiance was emerging only slowly in the late eighteenth century, and these men still held strong loyalties to their states and regions. This study of Wolcott's life affirms that nationalism was strongly tempered by sectionalism. A second leading aspect of Wolcott's life, and this period, was the commitment to a mercantilistic future. Important Federalists and Republicans agreed that America needed a strong, vibrant national government capable of directing an increasingly diverse economy of agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing. Yet a third aspect was the substantial paranoia in early national politics. The divisiveness between Federalists and Republicans was often emotional, irrational, even hysterical. In the case of Wolcott, it aroused sectionalist bias, even occasionally overwhelming his commitment to nationalism and mercantilism.

Finally, the rise of Oliver Wolcott Jr. in the federal bureaucracy provides an insight into the workings of those secondary leaders who dedicated themselves to appointive office. While principled, Wolcott was also ambitious, and that ambition did much to mold his career and America's future.

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