Abstract:
The Whig Promise argues that antebellum American Whigs shared an observable middle-class worldview, and this perspective informed their politics, as well as their wider lives. My works explores the Whig mind along five broad, related themes: the Individual, Society, the State, the Past, and the Future. In my view, these topics offer the best windows into the shared outlook of the first group of Americans to embrace middle-class values, character, and temperament. Further, this study demonstrates that Whig political thought was geared toward the future, not the past, and Whigs believed the state should support individuals’ and broader groups’ efforts to work together to achieve material prosperity, promote intellectual development, and prevent public disorder. Whigs were deeply optimistic about America’s possibilities, so long as individual Americans developed self-control.
