" Madison, _Federalist_, No. 10.] In
their own cities they saw faction, artificiality, fever. This was no
environment in which the democratic ideal could prosper, no place
where a group of independent and equally competent people managed
their own affairs spontaneously. They looked further, guided somewhat
perhaps by Jean Jacques Rousseau, to remote, unspoiled country
villages. They saw enough to convince themselves that there the ideal
was at home. Jefferson in particular felt this, and Jefferson more
than any other man formulated the American image of democracy. From
the townships had come the power that had carried the American
Revolution to victory. From the townships were to come the votes that
carried Jefferson's party to power. Out there in the farming
communities of Massachusetts and Virginia, if you wore glasses that
obliterated the slaves, you could see with your mind's eye the image
of what democracy was to be.
"The American Revolution broke out," says de Tocqueville, [Footnote:
_Democracy in America,_ Vol. I, p. 51. Third Edition] "and the
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in
the townships, took possession of the state." It certainly took
possession of the minds of those men who formulated and popularized
the stereotypes of democracy. "The cherishment of the people was our
principle," wrote Jefferson. [Footnote: Cited in Charles Beard,
_Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy.
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