Chapter 6

Confucianism in the Making of U.S. Democracy

In the preceding chapters, I have introduced the effects of Confucian moral philosophy in the American colonial era. In the founding and the early republic eras, when the founders were contemplating the direction of the newly independent United States, they found the value of Confucianism and adopted some aspects of Confucian social and political principles to assist in their efforts to build a democratic system of government.

After the victory of the American Revolution, the founders took Confucian ideas and used them to frame new political institutions. I will also investigate how Confucian merit-based avenues were actualized to transform the American civil service system. Finally, I will examine Confucian educational principles and Thomas Jefferson’s revolution of the American educational system.

The founders’ efforts to pursue some of the positive Confucian moral, social, and political approaches were part of a broader ideological shift. These sought to replace the historic Western emphasis on birthright with systems of merit-based succession. Their efforts contributed to the emergence of a “[distinct] American character with new sets of values,”¹ one that was further removed from its European roots and was prepared to craft its own national identity.

CONFUCIAN VIRTUE AND THE FOUNDERS’ EFFORTS TO CREATE A NEW VIRTUE FOR THE NEW NATION

At first glance, Confucius and the founding of the United States do not seem to be related. Confucius, the Latinized name of Kongzi (孔子) (550–476 BC), was a great philosopher and educator who lived at the end of “the Spring and Autumn Period” (771–476 BC) in China. The American decision to declare independence in 1776 initiated a period in which the founders waged their death-or-life struggle to expel the imperialist rule of Great Britain. However, despite their differences, a close relationship existed. The American founders applied many values from Confucian moral philosophy to the formation of the United States.² Their recognition of Confucian ideas can be seen in places such as Montpelier, the house of James Madison, the father of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which displayed a portrait of Confucius. In addition, Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, considered the Chinese sage to be in the same category as Jesus and Socrates.³ Benjamin Franklin, the creator of the American Spirit, made the solemn statement that Confucian moral philosophy was valuable to human beings in general.⁴ Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, also promoted Confucian moral principles in his inaugural speech in 1801. In his personal scrapbook, Jefferson placed a poem about an ideal Chinese prince that was recommended by Confucius.

Other founders such as John Adams and Benjamin Rush (1746–1813) also regarded Confucius highly in their efforts to formulate a blueprint for the new nation. These founders urged the citizens of the United States to adopt positive elements from Confucian moral philosophy and follow these moral examples to cultivate and advance their own virtues.⁵

The shared reverence of Confucius by the American founders has stimulated my curiosity. Why did they find Confucius’s moral teachings so important? The American Revolution was a political revolution that marked the birth of the United States as a new nation. Additionally, it was simultaneously a moral revolution. While the founders were concerned with preserving their civil liberties and economic freedom as expressed by “no taxation without representation,” they were also concerned with public morality. They fully understood that the American Revolutionary War was as much a battle against “the corruption of 18th century British high society” as it was against financial oppression.⁶ As a result, the Founding Fathers were determined to create new virtues better responsive to the interests of the new nation. Having seen the consequences of moral corruption in the old world, the founders worked diligently to use all valuable moral resources available for them to create distinctly American virtues for the newly independent nation.

A Good Moral Position Is Life or Death to the New Nation

Virtue is the basis and foundation of an empire and the source from whence flows whatever may render it flourishing.⁷

The end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 brought freedom to the former British colonists in the thirteen colonies, but with this freedom also came greater opportunities to misbehave. During the late eighteenth century, moral issues caused by a culture of pleasure and freedom blossomed in American cities. According to some existing historical records, one could find a public place to engage in illicit activities on nearly every block in every eighteenth-century American city. John Adams realized that “we may look up to Armies for our defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where virtue is not supremely honored.”⁸

Alarmed by those problems and other social issues, the founders reached a consensus that moral construction was not only a necessity to make the fruit of the revolution sustainable but also it should be considered a priority. The founders believed that only virtuous people could live in a free society. Almost every Founding Father testified to the link between liberty and virtue. George Washington (1732–1799) told Americans, “It is essentially true that virtue or morality is a main and necessary spring of popular or republican governments.”⁹ Benjamin Rush stated, “Without virtue there can be no liberty.”¹⁰ Benjamin Franklin warned, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”¹¹ Thomas Jefferson told his fellow Americans, “A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.”¹²

John Adams told the Americans that while the success of the revolution made the former colonies free, “they will not obtain a lasting Liberty” without good virtues.¹³ He continued, “If Virtue & Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslav’d. This will be their great Security.”¹⁴ Adams repeatedly warned, “Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”¹⁵ To prevent corruption became John Adams’s main concerns. He told his compatriots,

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.¹⁶

James Madison echoed the sentiment with the statement that the aim of U.S. Constitution was to find “men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of society,” and in the meantime “to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”¹⁷

As the main creators of the new nation, the founders knew that it took more than a perfect plan of government to maintain liberty. They needed some moral principles accepted by the people to encourage them to obey laws voluntarily. They recognized that a free government should be supported by people who could act morally without compulsion and would not willfully violate the rights of others. Benjamin Franklin passionately believed that “laws without morals are in vain.”¹⁸ Cultivating new virtues for the fledgling United States, therefore, became one of the most significant themes during this time of social and political transformation. The founders turned to Confucian moral philosophy.

Private Virtue and Confucian Moral Philosophy

Public virtue was regarded as a foundation of freedom. Private virtue was considered the most important element of public virtue. As early as 1776, John Adams emphasized the significance of private virtue. He explained to his fellow Americans that the new American government’s principles were “great and excellent among Men. But its Principles are as easily destroyed, as human Nature is corrupted.” Therefore, “public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” However, “Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private, and there must be a positive Passion for the public good, the public Interest,”¹⁹ James Madison also emphasized the significance of private virtue. For him, “To suppose liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea.”²⁰ Thomas Jefferson also told the Americans,

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community…. The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.²¹

Jefferson understood that leaders had to establish role models for the nation to continue its success.

Private virtue meant being a person of integrity. Such qualities essential to private virtue included being honest in one’s dealings with others, being faithful in one’s duties to one’s family, and controlling one’s appetites. The qualities that private virtue emphasized could be found in the values that Confucius promoted. For instance, one of the main tenets of Confucian moral philosophy is a positive passion for the public good and public interest.

Moral philosophy is one of the most important components of Confucianism, which is regarded as the crystallization of ancient Chinese traditional culture. Confucius taught,

You will find Men capable of Governing happily the Kingdom of the Earth. You will see some that will have Magnanimity enough to refuse the most considerable Dignities and Advantages: There will be some also that will have Courage enough to walk on Naked Swords: But you will find few, that are capable of keeping a just Mean. That to arrive hereat, Art, Labor, Courage and Virtue are requir’d.²²

Confucius taught that a perfect leader could create a perfect world through moral strength and example. Confucius viewed a leader as a moral person. Anyone who foresaw serving in a role of leadership as result of either desire or social status should rigorously mold and polish personal character, or Te (德). Te in this sense was not just personal power but also positive human qualities such as honesty and loyalty. Confucius believed that personal self-cultivation should be practiced for the benefit of society. For Confucius, a leader “ought always to be master of his own Heart, and Actions; He must not suffer himself to be corrupted by the Conversation, or Examples of loose and effeminate Persons.”²³

The founders understood that respectable and benevolent men were more likely to support the universal pursuit of happiness. An affectionate man would not only be more likely to live in harmony with his neighbors but also be able to understand the mutual sacrifices required for the success of the new nation. The founders drew from Confucius’s moral teachings for private virtue that the new nation required.

The main tenets of Confucian moral philosophy provided what the founders wanted to develop: the new private virtue for its citizens and future leaders. These founders dreamed of creating truly virtuous people brought up by the Confucian standards of a gentleman. As a result, Confucian moral philosophy became important to the founders and the cause they fought for.

CONFUCIAN MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN NORTH AMERICA AROUND THE REVOLUTION

In eighteenth-century colonial society, the impact of Confucius was widely discussed in the North American colonies. Some eminent colonists, including Benjamin Franklin, expressed their respect for the philosopher. Franklin followed Confucius’s practices and measures for moral cultivation, developing his own virtues as early as 1727.²⁴ Franklin saw it as his responsibility to spread Confucius’s moral teachings. He published some excerpts from Morals of Confucius in his widely circulated Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737.²⁵ Franklin also made it clear that he regarded Confucius as his role model in 1749.²⁶ In August 1775, on the eve of American independence, Thomas Paine revealed a critical and meaningful interest in China. He published a series of works about China in the Pennsylvania Magazine.²⁷

Other prominent figures of the day also recognized the value of Confucian teachings. John Bartram (1699–1777), a well-known botanist in the colonies, was very interested in Chinese philosophy, particularly in the personality of Confucius.²⁸ Bartram’s paper, Life and Character of the Chinese Philosopher Confucius, introduced Confucius’s life to his readers.²⁹ James Logan (1674–1751), another very influential colonist in Philadelphia, acquired a copy of the first European printing of Confucius’s philosophy for his personal library in 1733.³⁰ Logan was not satisfied with the translation by the Jesuits and showed his desire to obtain the “true sense” of Confucianism.³¹ Joel Barlow (1754–1812), an American poet and diplomat, considered Confucius to be one of the wisest philosophers in the history of antiquity.³² Jedidiah Morse (1761–1826), a notable geographer, praised Daxue (大学 Great Learning) and Zhongyong (中庸 the Doctrine of the Mean), two of the four classics of Confucius. Morse extolled the two classics as “the most excellent precepts of wisdom and virtue, expressed with the greatest eloquence, elegance and precision.”³³ Morse also compared Confucius with Socrates. He pointed out that Confucius was “very striking, and which far exceeds, in clearness, the prophecy of Socrates.”³⁴ A contemporary author found that Morse’s high praise of the Chinese sage “is especially significant” because Morse wrote his Geography for the youth of America and “considered it a means of instructing students in patriotism and morality.”³⁵

In May 1788, an article published in Columbian Magazine discussed Confucian morals related to filial piety.³⁶ One author loved Confucius’s philosophy so much that he published a paper under the pen name Confucius Discipulus, introducing Confucius and Confucian moral teachings. In his paper, carried in the September 1793 edition of New Hampshire Magazine, this author gave “a concise History of Confucius, a famous Chinese philosopher.” He also declared to his readers that Confucius was “a character so truly virtuous.”³⁷

Among women in the fledging United States, Confucian moral philosophy was also read and appreciated. Mrs. Elizabeth Drinker in Philadelphia was deeply impressed by Confucian moral teachings. Mrs. Drinker believed that people in her era should follow Confucius to cultivate their virtues. After studying the Morals of Confucius, she wrote in her diary on May 28, 1795,

I have been pleased by reading The Morals of Confucius, a Chinese Philosopher, who flourished about five hundred and fifty years before the coming of Christ—said to be one of the choicest pieces of Learning remaining of that nation. A sweet little piece it is. If there were such men in that day, what ought to be expected in this more enlightened Age!³⁸

The Founders’ Efforts to Use Confucius’s Moral Philosophy in their Efforts to Build New Virtue

The founders of the United States promoted Confucian moral teachings and urged these principles to be applied in the development of the nation. Benjamin Franklin cherished Confucian virtue so much that planned to build a United Party for Virtue. He announced to his readers,

There seems to me at present to be great occasion for raising a United Party for Virtue, by forming the virtuous and good men of all nations into a regular body, to be governed by suitable good and wise rules, which good and wise men may probably be more unanimous in their obedience to, than common people are to common laws.³⁹

Franklin used Confucian moral principles as a guideline to examine social phenomena after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. By using Confucian moral principles, Franklin opposed an idea raised by some revolutionary veterans who wanted to hand down glory to their descendants. In the wake of America’s victory, these veterans of the Revolutionary War wanted to establish a hereditary aristocracy to “distinguish themselves and their posterity from their fellow citizens.” These veterans wanted to form an order of hereditary knights and organized the Society of Cincinnatus hoping to let their descendants inherit their honor.⁴⁰ Franklin drew from Chinese examples to fight against this idea. In China, social promotion was based on “the Education, Instruction, and good Example afforded him by his Parents that he was rendered capable of Serving the Publick.”⁴¹ He divulged to new American citizens that the way of Chinese social promotion should be adopted. The European hereditary system “is not only groundless and absurd, but often hurtful to that Posterity.”⁴²

Confucius asserted that the people should be led by leaders who governed through their virtue rather than using their laws. He believed that if a government rested its rule entirely on laws, its people would try to escape punishment and have no sense of shame. Therefore, he reasoned that if the people were led by virtue, they would possess a sense of shame and follow their leaders through their own will.⁴³

In 1778, two years after the colonists declared their independence, Franklin addressed the significance of morality. He pointed out the necessity of governing with morality, especially for the leaders of the United States. He enjoined his fellow Americans that laws were not enough for the new nation. He asked, “What can laws do without morals?” Without virtue, the new nation “will in a course of minutes become corrupt like those of other and older Bushes, and consequently as wretched.”⁴⁴

Thomas Paine, the famous polemicist of republicanism, regarded Confucius as one of the world’s great moral teachers. In his “Age of Reason, 1791–1792,” Paine listed Confucius in the ranks of Jesus and the famous Greek philosophers. Paine reiterated this point in an article he wrote a decade later for The Prospect, a New York magazine. He stated that “Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, who lived five hundred years before the time of Christ says, ‘acknowledge thy benefits by the turn of benefits, but never revenge injuries .’”⁴⁵ In his political disagreements with the federalists, Paine used Confucian ideas to criticize their moral faults. He enjoined these federalists to follow Confucian teachings so they could be honest.⁴⁶

As to the hypocritical abuse thrown out by the federalists on other subjects, I recommend to them the observance of a commandment that existed before either Christian or Jew existed.

“Thou shalt make a covenant with thy senses,

“With thine eye, that it beholds no evil.

“With thine ear, that it hear no evil.

“With thy tongue, that it speak no evil.

“With thy hands that they commit no evils.”⁴⁷

For John Adams, the purpose of government is to promote the pursuit of happiness. Such happiness lies not merely in “ease, comfort, [and] security” but also characteristics such as virtue, humility, industry, and goodwill. Adams confidently declared “Confucius… agreed in this” goal of happiness through virtue.⁴⁸ Adams also realized that virtue ennobled individual character and lifted the entire society. Adams’s statement conveys the significance of virtue for a good government and the significance of Confucius’s moral philosophy in Adams’s own efforts to bring up “the minds of the people.” John Adams showed his high regard for Confucian virtues and believed that any good Americans should possess these traits.

In a letter to Jefferson, Adams criticized the English theologian and natural philosopher Joseph Priestley for ignoring Confucius in his writing. He said that “Priestley ought to have given us a sketch of the religion and morals of Zoroaster, of Sanchuniathon, of Confucius.”⁴⁹

Dr. Benjamin Rush, an ardent patriot, asserted in a 1798 essay on education in the new republic that “the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.” Having expressed his veneration for Confucianism, which “reveals the attributes of the Deity,” Rush declared that he had rather see the opinions of Confucius “inculcated upon our youth, than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles.”⁵⁰

As one of the main founders of the new nation, Jefferson eventually became the third president after his victory in the election of 1800. For Jefferson, who tired of metaphysics, a practical religion that advanced private virtue, such as Confucianism, had definite appeal. As president, Jefferson realized the importance of Confucian values to keep his ideals alive and move the country forward. His inaugural speech manifested his thoughts on how to make the United States a great nation. Remarkably, Jefferson showed his confidence in using Confucian moral values in his efforts to lead the new nation in 1801. In front of the representatives celebrating his victory, Jefferson told his fellow citizens that the new nation had been “enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude and the love of man.”⁵¹

Jefferson admired Voltaire, the French leader of the Age of Enlightenment. Voltaire regarded Confucianism as a superior system of morals, and Confucius as the greatest of all sages. From Jefferson’s speech, it is evident that Jefferson accepted the Confucian concept of the true gentleman, and the belief that a good moral foundation was the foundation of a good government. Jefferson’s vision for a better United States was largely based on a benign religion and a wise government. The morals Jefferson listed in his inauguration speech were the same moral principles that Confucius maintained. Jefferson also enshrined the Confucian moral principle that a ruler loses his mandate if the people don’t approve in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”⁵² Furthermore, through careful examination of the Declaration of Independence and the First Great Pronouncement of King Wu,⁵³ one author has identified that Jefferson had imitated the First Great Pronouncement of King Wu.⁵⁴

During his presidency, Jefferson included an ancient Chinese poem from Shijing (诗经 The Book of Odes) in his scrapbook.⁵⁵ This poem is about an ancient Chinese prince who was set up as an example for other leaders of the nation to follow.⁵⁶ Jefferson’s inclusion of this specific Chinese poem is significant and reveals his close ties to Confucian ideals. Confucius pointed out, “He who governs by means of morality is like the North Star, which keeps its place with all the other stars gathering around it.”⁵⁷

Jefferson aimed to make himself this “North Polar Star.” Therefore, it was not a surprise that Thomas Jefferson regarded the Chinese prince, whom Confucius considered to be one of the ideal rulers, his role model.⁵⁸

The poem pays tribute to Prince Wu from the State of Wei, who was loved and respected by the people of his state.⁵⁹ Confucius praised Prince Wu when he quoted this poem in his famous book, The Great Learning, to provide a standard to aspire to other princes and leaders of various states.⁶⁰ Jefferson’s choosing to position this poem in his personal scrapbook indicates his determination to be as great a leader as Prince Wu. Therefore, “His mem’ry of eternal prime, Like truth defies the power of time!” Jefferson wanted himself to be “in manners goodly great, Refine the people of the state.” Jefferson used Prince Wu to encourage himself to be a leader loved by the future American people, just as Prince Wu was praised and remembered by all posterity.

In the section, “Poems of Nation,” Jefferson included certain commentary on his presidency. The “Poems of Nation” shows that Jefferson viewed his legacy as intertwined with the success of the republican experiment. Believing that he should help the United States to maintain his political, moral, and personal values in the history of the American Revolution, Jefferson collecteddocuments, books, newspapers, and other materials so that later historians could construct a right and comprehensive history of the American Revolution.⁶¹ Jefferson was very serious about preserving his personal legacy. His inclusion of the ancient Chinese poem in his scrapbook shows that Jefferson valued Confucianism highly and used some of the principles to build the new nation in the new land with rich natural resources. With the help of Confucianism, Jefferson was confident that he could achieve his goal. Jefferson had long regarded Confucius in the same rank as Jesus. During his years of retirement at Monticello, he recalled that he had classed Jesus “with the great men of antiquity—Zoroaster, Socrates, Confucius, &c.” in his correspondence with Dr. Rush.⁶²

Summary

During the founding era, the American Founding Fathers “managed to establish a set of ideas and institutions that, over the stretch of time, became the blueprint for political and economic success for the nation-state in the modern world.”⁶³ My intent is to bring to light the founders’ efforts to adopt some principles of Confucian moral philosophy and include them in the fiber of the newly independent United States as a free and democratic society. The founders tried to develop dependable morals, ensuring that a democratic system would function in the correct direction. They attempted to use Confucian moral philosophy to safeguard the democratic system, build private virtue, and bring up citizens with good morals to serve the new nation. Through the founders’ efforts, Confucian moral philosophy contributed greatly to the formation of American virtue.

CONFUCIANISM IN THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM

Immediately following the conclusion of the American War of Independence in 1783, the Founding Fathers faced the challenge of creating stablepolitical institutions to preserve the hard-earned fruits of their revolution. As John Adams (1735–1826) described this daunting task, “It is much easier to pull down a government, in such a conjuncture of affairs as we have seen, than to build up at such season as present.”⁶⁴ Some founders were worrying that “their enemies might have been right—America was ungovernable.”⁶⁵ The American Revolution entered an uncharted course. In a sense, it went into a second phase and the constitutional settlement of 1787–1788 became “a second founding moment, along with the original occasion of 1776.”⁶⁶

The Founding Fathers of the United States appreciated the gravity and unprecedented nature of their actions as they established the country’s charter during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Unsurprisingly, the Constitution was a controversial document. Following its completion, critics “condemned it as a betrayal of the core principles of the American Revolution” while defenders of the Constitution saluted it as a “sensible accommodation of liberty to power and a realistic compromise with the requirements of a national domain.”⁶⁷

The Founding Fathers, raised under Western schools of thought, were influenced by ideas regarding the role of government as expounded during the European Enlightenment. The founders were receptive to the concept of popular rule promoted by Enlightenment philosophers. One such philosopher was John Locke (1632–1704), who expressed his influential social contract theory in his Two Treatises on Government (1689 and 1690). This theory opposed the divine right of kings in favor of government grounded on the consent of the governed, so long as the latter agreed to forfeit certain liberties in exchange for basic rights to life, liberty, and property. Among the founders, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison “were acquainted with Montesquieu.”⁶⁸ However, as Professor Russel Blaine Nye has recognized, “it is misleading to assume that eighteenth-century America was merely a reflection of eighteenth-century Britain, or Europe.”⁶⁹

Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, several figureheads of the Enlightenment, such as Locke and Voltaire (1694–1778), held Confucian governing principles in high regard. For instance, Locke agreed that the governed have the right of rebellion, consistent with Confucian political theory. Locke reasoned that if a government failed to protect its subjects’ natural rights, then those subjects had a right to revolt and establish a new ruling class.⁷⁰ The founders expressed similar convictions on how the fundamental purpose of government was to serve its people. Simultaneously, the ruling class had to check the commoners. Founders such as James Madison (1751–1836) expressed concern that ceding too much political power to the uneducated and impoverished might destabilize society from a social and political perspective.⁷¹ Alexander Hamiltonalso considered that popular passion “spread like wild fire and become irresistible.”⁷²

The United States, guided by the founding principles set forth in its Constitution, has often been hailed as an example of modern democracy. However, the American system is not a pure democracy. The nation’s president is appointed through an “indirect popular election” based on the Electoral College, rather than via a direct majority vote. The Electoral College was an innovation created by the founders to reduce the power of the general public, thereby addressing the concerns expressed by Madison and his compatriots. Under the Electoral College system, a presidential candidate who wins the popular vote is not guaranteed the keys to the White House. Instead, the president is elected through a majority of electoral votes.⁷³

The role of Confucianism in the crafting of American democracy is perhaps one of the most conspicuous absences in the lists of founding influences. Evidence suggests that the Founding Fathers frequently drew on Confucian political philosophy when crafting a new and unique American political system. Noah Webster (1758–1843), known as the father of American scholarship and education, went so far as to proclaim Confucianism as one of the most influential forces in the development of the U.S. Constitution.⁷⁴

In this section, I will examine how the founders introduced Confucian ideas of government in their creation of a new political institution in the United States. I will provide a brief overview of Confucian philosophies regarding government, and then discuss Benjamin Franklin’s political theory and the founders’ efforts to apply Confucian principles in their creation of a new government system.

An Introduction to Confucian Governing Ideas

Confucius (551–479 BC) was a Chinese philosopher, teacher, and political figure whose works were posthumously installed as the nation’s official philosophy during the Han dynasty (206–220 AD). One of the guiding principles of Confucianism was that moral cultivation should originate from the leader of a nation. Remarkably, given the violent nature of his time, Confucius believed that rulers should govern subjects through education and personal example rather than through force. Confucius also maintained that government should exist for the people; between the ruler and his people, the latter was viewed as the more precious and important.⁷⁵

Confucius believed that a ruler’s good virtue was the primary prerequisite for leadership. Virtue, pronounced in Chinese as “d é,” was seen as a moral force that enabled rulers to gain the loyalty of others without physical coercion.⁷⁶ As Confucius noted, “Lead them by means of regulations and keep order among them through punishments, and the people will evade them and will lack any sense of shame. Lead them through moral force [d é] and keep order among them through rites [‘l ǐ’], and they will have a sense of shame and will also correct themselves.”⁷⁷ Confucius stated, “If the rulers lived by the highest principles, the people would then follow, and there would be reform from the greatest to the least.”⁷⁸ The virtuous ruler was analogous to a “pole-star” around which the lesser stars would orbit.⁷⁹

Notably, Confucius taught the democratic principle that sovereign rule originated from the people.⁸⁰ He compared the ruler to a boat and the people to water: “Water can carry the boat, and it can upset the boat.”⁸¹ In other words, the ruler’s right to govern was made possible through the consent of the people. Yet Confucius also believed that the moral character of the ruler had a sure and inevitable effect on his subjects. The moral power of the ruler could be represented as the wind, and the people as the grass: wherever the wind blew, the grass would be sure to bend.⁸²

In addition, Confucius opposed the misuse of official positions to enrich oneself. He said, “To act with an eye to personal profit will incur… resentment.”⁸³ One of his foundational tenets was that leaders should set moral examples. He said, “Exemplary persons [junzi] understand what is appropriate; petty persons understand what is of personal advantage.”⁸⁴ As Confucius further explained:

Wealth and honor are what people want, but if they are the consequence of deviating from the way [dao], I would have no part of them. Poverty and disgrace are what people deplore, but if they are the consequence of staying on the way, I would not avoid them. Wherein do the exemplary persons [junzi ] who would abandon their authoritative conduct [ren] warrant that name? Exemplary persons do not take leave of their authoritative conduct even for the space of a meal. When they are troubled, they certainly turn to it, as they do in facing difficulties.⁸⁵

Finally, Confucius also helped pioneer the concept of meritocracy, the notion that the selection of a ruler should be based on talent, effort, and achievement rather than heredity or wealth. The modern concept of political meritocracy is based on this framework, demanding first that political leaders are capable and virtuous, and second that such individuals are elected as governmental officials.

Having East Combining with the West—Benjamin Franklin’s Political Theory

The Founding Fathers were heavily influenced by the European Enlightenment, which demarcated a dramatic shift in Western thought.⁸⁶ Confucian principles had a meaningful impact on the Enlightenment and, by extension, the formation of the American political system.

Since the introduction of Confucianism into the West by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century, European intellectuals have advocated many of Confucius’s ideals regarding ethics, social conduct, and the role of government.⁸⁷ With an increased volume of translations of Confucian classics during the Age of Enlightenment, the philosopher’s principles of political meritocracy increasingly won the admiration of the European intellectuals, who encouraged the adoption of the Confucian system.⁸⁸ Voltaire and Fran ç ois Quesnay (1694–1774) were two such intellectuals: Voltaire claimed that Confucius created “perfected moral science” while Quesnay advocated an economic and political system modeled after Confucianism.⁸⁹ The Enlightenment intellectuals’ emphasis on “reason and virtue,” influenced by Confucianism, spread across the Atlantic Ocean and reached the American colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century.⁹⁰

It was around this period that Benjamin Franklin, unsatisfied with the corruption of the British government, formulated his theory for transforming the Western political system. For Franklin, the ideal political system was one that combined Confucian government principles with Western social traditions. Franklin described his theory in a letter to George Whitefield (1714–1770), a well-known Christian minister during the Great Awakening, in which he summarized the government-led Confucian social progress model with the masses-initiated Western one:

I am glad to hear that you have frequent opportunities of preaching among the great. If you can gain them to a good and exemplary life, wonderful changes will follow in the manners of the lower ranks; for, ad Exemplum Regis, &c. On this principle Confucius, the famous eastern reformer, proceeded. When he saw his country sunk in vice, and wickedness of all kinds triumphant, he applied himself first to the grandees; and having by his doctrine won them to the cause of virtue, the commons followed in multitudes. The mode has a wonderful influence on mankind; and there are numbers that perhaps fear less the being in Hell, than out of the fashion! Our more western reformations began with the ignorant mob; and when numbers of them were gained, interest and party-views drew in the wise and great. Where both methods can be used, reformations are like to be more speedy. O that some method could be found to make them lasting! He that shall discover that, will, in my opinion, deserve more, ten thousand times, than the inventor of the longtitude.⁹¹

In his letter, Franklin expressed three points that would have a meaningful impact on the nascent American political system. First, Franklin believed leaders should be the “cause of virtue.” Second, Franklin recognized that the modes of social progress were different between the East and West; the former was characterized by good government and the latter by “the ignorant mob.” Finally, combining the Western mode of social progress with Eastern governing traditions was essential to political progress. The interplay of these three points, which served as the foundation of Franklin’s theory, is illustrated (figure 6.1):

In the East, social progress was achieved through the elite leading the masses—in Franklin’s words, the wise and great (cause of virtue) would lead the commons (ignorant mobs) to social progress. This dynamic was reversed in the West, where the commons pushed the wise and great to social progress. John Adams shared Franklin’s opinion on Western social progress: “The most Atheistical Philosophers of France and of Europe encouraged in secret this engine to work upon popular Credulity and excite popular passions.”⁹²

Figure 6.1 Benjamin Franklin’s Theory Chart. Source: Created by author.

Franklin viewed neither mode as complete in itself. A combination of the two would create a superior framework. Practically speaking, Franklin’s theory emphasized the importance of three elements. The first was a strong central government. In addition, leaders in the central government should be virtuous examples for the public to follow. Finally, the power dynamic between the government and public should be controlled by a system of checks and balances.

Franklin’s references to Confucian principles of government were unsurprising. This Founding Father had long been familiar with the Chinese philosopher’s teachings. For example, a decade earlier in his widely circulated Pennsylvania Gazette, Franklin had proclaimed his favoritism of Confucius’s teachings as requirements for colonial leaders:

His will inclining only to good, his soul will be entirely rectified, there will not be any passion that can make him destroy his rectitude: The soul being thus rectified, he will be employed in his exterior, nothing will be observed in his person that can offend complaisance. His person being thus perfected, his family, forming it fell according to this model, will be reformed and amended. His family being arrived at this perfection, twill serve as an example to all the subjects of the particular kingdoms and the members of the of the particular Kingdoms to all those that compose the body of the empire. Thus the whole empire. Thus the whole empire will be well governed and justice will reign: we shall there enjoy a profound peace, twill be a happy and flourishing empire.⁹³

Confucius taught that the leaders should shoulder responsibility for the actions and welfare of their people. As he described, “the famine of my people is my own famine. My people’s sin is my own sin.”⁹⁴ Franklin similarly espoused the importance of good virtue. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he emphasized the significance of virtue in government to fellow delegates:

Much of the Strength and Efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing Happiness to the People depends on Opinion, on the general Opinion of the Goodness of that Government as well as of the Wisdom and Integrity of its Governors.⁹⁵

Franklin ardently believed that moral citizenry was necessary for a healthy society and held himself responsible for instilling virtue in the nation’s youth. He believed that a populace’s wisdom and virtue were more important than its military and financial success. As in times of weak government, situations of excessive military and wealth could lead to sociopolitical instability. In this sense, a few virtuous leaders could hold sway over huge masses. Franklin wrote:

Nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in my opinion, the strength of a state: much more so than riches or arms, which, under the management of Ignorance and Wickedness, often draw on destruction, instead of providing for the safety of a people. And though the culture bestowed on many should be successful only with a few, yet the influence of those few and the service in their power, may be very great.⁹⁶

Franklin also appreciated the importance of checks and balances to discourage misbehavior in both leaders and the general public. Such measures were meant to counteract human nature, as Franklin believed government was derived “not from a voluntary human contract, but from human weakness and necessities.”⁹⁷

Franklin resided in England from 1757 to 1762 and 1764 to 1775 as colonial representative for Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, during which he began to formulate his theory of ideal government. Franklin underwent a “political metamorphosis” in London.⁹⁸ In particular, he began to lose confidence in the British Parliament during this time. This was partly due to his realization that the British courts represented a departure from the Confucian virtues that he held in high regard. Franklin’s previously conservative attitudes began to align more closely with the radicalism of the American revolutionaries, and he would eventually become a stalwart patriot and one of the key founders of the United States.

Franklin would express his concerns about the colonial government on the eve of the American Revolution. He had witnessed many poor colonial governors. As he had also lost faith in Great Britain’s political system, he found little guidance from across the Atlantic.⁹⁹ In a letter dated September 1769, two decades after he had first elaborated on his theory of government, Franklin pointed out that without proper governance, “sending soldiers to Boston always appeared… a dangerous step [for Great Britain]; [the soldiers] could do no good, they might occasion mischief.” However, Franklin recognized that the colonies also bore their share of responsibility for conflicts with Mother England; its affairs were often poorly managed by local rulers.¹⁰⁰

The colonists’struggle for independence encouraged Franklin’s hope that the American Revolution would provide a catalyst for a superior system of government. In 1777, Franklin stated regarding the Revolution, “it is a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own.”¹⁰¹

The following year, Franklin admonished his fellow Americans that “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations became corrupt and vicious, they need masters.”¹⁰² He emphasized the importance of a virtuous government for the new nation:

What the political struggle I have been engag’d in for the good of my compatriots, inhabitants of this bush; or my philosophical studies for the benefits of our race in general! For in politics, what can laws do without morals? Our present race of ephemeras will in a course of minutes become corrupt like those of other and older Bushes, and consequently as wretched.¹⁰³

In summary, Franklin recognized the importance of introducing Confucian principles during the formative years of the United States. His political theory was an amalgamation of the East and West with the former based on Confucian political theories regarding effective government.

Using Confucian Meritocracy to Check European Aristocratic Inheritance

Franklin found an opportunity to guide the new sociopolitical environment in the United States toward certain Confucian ideals of good government. He appreciated the unprecedented nature of his situation, claiming “It is a singular Thing in the History of Mankind, that a great People have had the Opportunity of forming a Government for themselves.”¹⁰⁴

Several conflicts within the fledgling United States began to resurface following the cessation of hostilities, occupying the attention of the Founding Fathers. About 6,000 loyalists moved to Canada, with some starting insurgencies such as Shay’s Rebellion in 1786. By the mid-1780s, the new nation threatened to collapse only several years after it had gained independence. Many states were roiled by social conflicts between the wealthy and the commoners, often over financial issues of credit. The country was divided religiously, with significant populations of Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Calvinists, Huguenots, Lutherans, Quakers, Jews, agnostics, and atheists. The country faced socioeconomic stratification as well from the landed aristocracy to indentured servants.¹⁰⁵ George Washington remarked that the thirteen states were united only “by a rope of sand.”¹⁰⁶

During this time, delegates at the Second Continental Congress (1775–1781) and Confederation Congress (1781–1788) were unable to achieve consensus on how the nation should be governed and what powers the individual states ought to retain. The founders were anxious to create a system of government that could sustain the nation through the ages.

Regarding the nation’s new government, some revolutionaries were convinced that it was within the nation’s best interest to establish a system resembling European monarchy.¹⁰⁷ In a similar vein, some Revolutionary War veterans sought to establish a hereditary aristocracy in order to “distinguish themselves and their posterity from their fellow citizens.” In 1784, these veterans formed an order of hereditary knights and organized the Society of Cincinnatus.¹⁰⁸

Franklin used this opportunity to introduce Confucian meritocracy. Based on these principles, Franklin decried the members of the Society of Cincinnatus as directly opposing the “solemnly declared Sense of their Country.” Instead, Franklin posited the Confucian system of meritocracy to the new nation:

Thus among the Chinese, the most antient, and, from long Experience, the wisest of Nations, Honour does not descend but ascends. If a Man from his Learning, his Wisdom or his Valour, is promoted by the Emperor to the Rank of Mandarin, his Parents are immediately intitled to all the same Ceremonies of Respect from the People, that are establish’d as due to the Mandarin himself; on this Supposition, that it must have been owing to the Education, Instruction, and good Example afforded him by his Parents that he was rendered capable of Serving the Publick. This ascending Honour is therefore useful to the State as it encourages Parents to give their Children a good and virtuous Education. But the descending Honour, to Posterity who could have had no Share in obtaining it, is not only groundless and absurd, but often hurtful to that Posterity, since it is apt to make them proud, disdaining to be employed in useful Arts, and thence falling into Poverty and all the Meannesses, Servility and Wretchedness attending it; which is the present case with much of what is called the Noblesse in Europe.¹⁰⁹

John Adams, John Jay (1745–1829), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), and other founders supported these meritocratic ideas. They condemned the Cincinnati Society “as an attempt to establish hereditary nobility in the American Republic.”¹¹⁰ Jefferson revealed to Washington that his stay in Europe had convinced him that the Society of Cincinnati was a real threat to American government. He said, “because it would produce an hereditary aristocracy—not in his lifetime, perhaps, but eventually; it would change the form of American governments from the best to the worst in the world.”¹¹¹ In 1784, Washington echoed that “unless the grounds of popular complaint were eliminated,” the Society of Cincinnatus should be terminated.¹¹²

Confucian meritocracy was influential among other founders. Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804), known to be foreign born and illegitimate, had risen to a position of prominence in the United States when he would have otherwise “[languished] in obscurity” across the Atlantic.¹¹³ Hamilton’ s political viewpoints were well respected and debated among the founders. He was regarded as a symbol of how meritocracy could triumph over European aristocratic tradition.¹¹⁴ Jefferson had realized that the aristocracy “could not long maintain its high sense of public obligation on its existing foundation. The trouble was that it was based, not on merit, but on inherited privilege.”¹¹⁵

Using Virtue to Check Public Officials

The American Founding Fathers were faced with justifying the doctrine of popular sovereignty as the basis of their new government. During the colonial era, the founders had leveraged this doctrine to rally the colonists against the British. In the aftermath of the war, the founders sought to balance the principles of popular rule while simultaneously maintaining a stablegovernment that would preserve the rights and liberties of its citizens.¹¹⁶ The Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia from May to September 1787, was intended to craft such a government for a nation that had been built by its people. Franklin seized the opportunity at this convention to advance the political theory that he had developed.

Since returning to America in 1785, Franklin had devoted himself to laying the foundation of the new nation’s government. Just before he reached Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention, Franklin received a letter from Charles de Butr é, then the secretary of the Society of Agriculture of Strasbourg and one of the most important collaborators of the physiocrat workshops. In this letter, de Butr é referenced China as an example for Franklin during this critical juncture: the United States should “read its laws drawn by its plows; like yao, chum, and yu, had taken them there in China over 40 centuries ago or they still exist, and will last as long as the centuries since they conform to eternal decrees which are unalterable.”¹¹⁷

Franklin was one of the most influential members of the convention. If his health permitted, Franklin might have been the only delegate other than George Washington in consideration to serve as chair of the convention.¹¹⁸ Despite being eighty-one years old and facing fragile health, Franklin worked tirelessly for over four months to secure the fruits of the revolution, bringing crucial strengths and perspectives as the oldest member of the party. He described the significance of failure during the convention as such: “Mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to Chance, War and Conquest.”¹¹⁹

To illustrate effective government, Franklin contrasted the state government of Massachusetts with that of Pennsylvania. Franklin was alarmed by the dangerous Shay’s Rebellion in the former state. His reaction was consistent with the Confucian principle that effective governments would guarantee their citizens against revolution.¹²⁰ In contrast to that of Massachusetts, the Pennsylvania government was well organized with a prudent system of checks and balances. The Pennsylvania government was characterized by two parties, one for “preserving the Constitution as it was, and the other for adding an upper house as a check to the Assembly.”¹²¹

Franklin acknowledged that although the Convention did not seek to establish a kingdom for the new nation, there was a “natural Inclination in Mankind to Kingly Government.”¹²² For example, Alexander Hamiltonand others had recommended a single executive appointed for life. Franklin opposed, contending that because the government of the United States “derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people,” its president should hold office for a limited rather than permanent period. James Madison echoed Franklin’s sentiment, claiming that “an elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”¹²³

Franklin cautioned fellow citizens that the way to delay the “catastrophe” of monarchy was to establish government positions as “Posts of Honor.”¹²⁴ He also emphasized the importance of virtue. If men lacking good virtue were put in “a [Post] of Honor,” they would make their positions “a Place of Profit.”¹²⁵ Franklin believed that immoral persons had ruined the British government by making it “so tempestuous.”¹²⁶ The struggles for various British government positions were “the true Source of all those Factions which are perpetually dividing the Nation, distracting its Councils, hurrying it sometimes into fruitless, and mischievous Wars, and often compelling a Submission to dishonorable Terms of Peace.”¹²⁷ With his overseas experiences in mind, Franklin was determined in his crafting of early American government that “The first man at the helm will be a good one.”¹²⁸

Throughout the convention, Franklin consistently emphasized the importance of good virtue for the leaders of the new nation. He would note to other delegates that ambition and avarice were the “two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men”; the combination of these two traits might produce “the most violent effects.”¹²⁹ Franklin cautioned that if individuals with such traits were in positions of power, they might “perpetually [divide] the nation, [distract] its councils, [hurry] sometimes into fruitless & mischievous wars, and often [compel] a submission to dishonorable terms of peace.”¹³⁰ As Franklin noted:

It will not be the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits. These will thrust themselves into your Government and be your rulers. And these too will be mistaken in the expected happiness of their situation: For their vanquished competitors of the same spirit, and from the same motives will perpetually be endeavouring to distress their administration, thwart their measures, and render them odious to the people.¹³¹

The Constitutional Convention of 1788, held with these principles in mind, sought to design a centralized national government with the authority to oversee a federation of states.

Using the Electoral College to Check the Populace

The founders distrusted strong central government from their own experiences with the British. However, they appreciated that the new government needed the authority to enforce its edicts over a diverse federation of states. Confronted with meaningful social, political, and economic disorder in the wake of the revolution, the founders reached a consensus in early 1787 to amend the Articles of Confederation in favor of a more centralized system.

At the convention, representatives considered several methods to elect the president. Such proposals included direct popular election, selection by one of Congress, the governors of the states, state legislatures, or a special group of members of Congress chosen by lot. One such proposal was James Madison’s Virginia Plan, which proposed that a “National Executive be chosen by the National Legislature for the terms of years.” Franklin opposed the Virginia Plan, believing it to be a violation of the separation of power: a system in which the National Legislature participated in the election of another branch would ensure that the elected executive be heavily swayed by the interests of that electoral branch.

In lieu of Madison’s Virginia Plan, the founders devised a system in which each state received presidential “electors” equal to the number of its senators and congressional representatives. These electors, chosen by whatever means each state decided, would each vote for two men. The candidate with the majority of electoral votes became president, while the second-place finisher became vice president. This structure was noted in Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution as such:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.¹³²

This system, to be known as the Electoral College, was originally proposed by James Wilson (1742–1798). Wilson was selected to be one of six delegates who reported the final document for acceptance, an honor in recognition of his role as one of the proposal’s chief architects. Although Wilson had promoted the idea that the committee meet in secret, there was enough reason to believe that Franklin was involved in the plan given the close relationship that the two had shared.¹³³ At the convention, Wilson acted as Franklin’s speaker; it is possible that Franklin had his ideas transmitted by James Wilson among the delegates. On the last day of the convention, September 17, 1787, Franklin had Wilson read his final speech to the audience. Immediately after ratification, the College of Philadelphia, founded by Franklin, hired James Wilson to give a series of lectures explaining and analyzing the Constitution. In 1790, Wilson received an honorary LLD degree from the College of Philadelphia and became its first professor of law. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt had Wilson’s casket carried to Philadelphia and buried next to Franklin’s (figure 6.2).¹³⁴

Figure 6.2 Franklin and His Friends at the Constitutional Convention. Allyn Cox: The Constitutional Convention, oil on canvas mural by Allyn Cox, 1973–1974; in the House of Representatives wing of the U.S. Capitol building, depicting (from left) Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin.

The president was selected by the Electoral College, which was “originally composed of electors selected by methods left up to the various state legislature.”¹³⁵ The Electoral College reflected a compromise between the Enlightenment ideal that the “nation should govern itself” and the necessity of having a system of checks and balances. The establishment of the Electoral College reflected how Franklin and other delegates did not fully trust the population to elect the most capable candidate. Franklin hoped that the chosen electors would be able to ensure that the most qualified person became president. James Madison advocated for Franklin’s position, stating, “A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”¹³⁶ Madison hoped to minimize the abuses of majority rule.¹³⁷ For Madison, the entire point of political representation is “to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations.”¹³⁸ He also reasoned that “it may well happen that the public voice pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good, than if pronounced by the people themselves convened for the purpose.”¹³⁹ Alexander Hamiltonalso reiterated that the genuine selection of the president should be made

by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favourable to deliberation and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements, which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to so complicated an investigation.¹⁴⁰

By 1787, many of the founders were similarly realistic about the importance of relying on institutional checks rather than on individual virtue as the most effective means of maintaining liberty.¹⁴¹

The Electoral College reflected Franklin’s theory of combining Eastern with Western influences. As Franklin expressed to la Rochefoucauld, the new nation presented an opportunity to experiment in politics.¹⁴² Franklin warned that for those who still clung to Western traditions, the introduction of new cultural elements was “natural and unavoidable.”¹⁴³ Franklin worked to communicate the merits of various non-Western influences to various representatives, and advised that the proposed Constitution would lead the nation to be “well administered for a Course of Years.”¹⁴⁴

Carl Van Doren declared that Franklin “was the author of the compromise which held the delegates together” in July 1787.¹⁴⁵ Throughout the convention, Franklin had helped lay the foundation for the democratic republic that the Constitution would enshrine.¹⁴⁶ As one of the most influential members of the Constitutional Convention, Franklin helped draft the Constitution and create the Electoral College. As such, he was called Sage of the Constitutional Convention, and the ratification of the Constitution was described as his “great victory in the Convention.”¹⁴⁷

John Adams Agreed with Confucian Principles: The Purpose of the Government Was to Serve the People

John Adams served in London as an ambassador during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, so he did not have as direct an impact on the drafting of the Constitution. However, Adams influenced the formation of U.S. government through his political writings. Two examples of such writings were “Thoughts on Government” (1776) and A Defense of the Constitutions of the United States of America (1778), which helped develop the principles of American government that Franklin, Madison, and other delegates applied at the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Adams was an ardent supporter of the new Constitution.¹⁴⁸

Adams, one of the premier American political minds, often referred to Confucian philosophies regarding government during the formative period of the new nation’s political system. Adams was known to discuss the nature and application of Confucian governmental principles. He was unsatisfied with the English translations of Confucius and would instead read the original Latin translations.¹⁴⁹ In 1808, he confessed to his fellow founders that “Having named Voltaire I may now explain my long silence. For three or four months I have been in company with such great Personages as Moses, Zoroaster, Sanchuniathon, Confucius, Numa, Mahomet and others of that Rank.”¹⁵⁰

Adams believed that in determining the means of government, the United States ought to first consider the ends. He noted that throughout history, “all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man.” From his perspective, the best system of government would be that which brought “happiness to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree.” He continued that humans “ancient and modern, Pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity consists in virtue. Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Mahomet, not to mention authorities really sacred, have agreed in this.”¹⁵¹

Like Franklin, Adams agreed with the Confucian principle that “the wise and brave” should be the leaders of the nation. For Adams, a simple, perfect democracy “had never yet existed.”¹⁵² Adams reasoned,

In a large society, inhabiting an extensive country, it is impossible that the whole should assemble, to make laws: The first necessary step then, is, to depute power from the many, to a few of the most wise and good.¹⁵³

Adams also emphasized the importance of virtue in a republic: “the dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people and every blessing of society, depends so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice.”¹⁵⁴

In early January 1787, Adams had rushed the first installment of his efforts, titled A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, to a London printer. In addition to supporting Franklin’s call for virtuous leaders to oversee the new nation, Adams attempted to devise systems to check the balance of power between rulers and commoners. Adams was wary of pure democracy, warning that such systems might lead to disaster:

There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy. It is not true in Fact and no where appears in history. Those Passions are the same in all Men under all forms of Simple Government, and when unchecked, produce the same Effects of Fraud Violence and Cruelty.¹⁵⁵

Notably, other founders such as James Madison agreed with Adams. Madison claimed,

Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.¹⁵⁶

These founders viewed unchecked democracy as akin to mob rule and questioned the ability of such masses to collectively make informed decisions.

In conclusion, John Adams and James Madison shared Benjamin Franklin’s respect for Confucian governing principles, specifically with respect to the purpose of government and the importance of virtuous leaders.

Jefferson Used Confucian Political Virtue to Help Him Establish Cultural Independence

Jefferson declared cultural independence from Great Britain on more than one occasion. The poems he gathered from American newspapers reveal his distaste for the English monarchy.¹⁵⁷ Although Jefferson was in France serving as minister for the United States when the Constitution was drafted in 1787, he was able to influence the development of the federal government through his correspondence with his fellow founders. Franklin “advanced many of the positions that the younger Virginian likely would have championed.”¹⁵⁸ Like John Adams, Jefferson was delighted to learn the achievement of the convention. He recalled in his autobiography that he “ received a copy [of the Constitution] early in November, and read and contemplated its provisions with great satisfaction.”¹⁵⁹

Jefferson preferred republican government.¹⁶⁰ In his Notes on the State of Virginia, published in Europe in 1785, Jefferson spent a great deal of time pondering constitutional issues. While in Paris prior to the Constitutional Convention, Jefferson closely followed developments in the United States and corresponded with facilitators such as James Madison, a fellow driving force behind the 1787 Constitutional Convention and an author of the Federalist Papers.¹⁶¹

One of Jefferson’s most important contributions to the formation of American democratic institutions was his promotion of Confucian moral values for the leaders. Jefferson aspired to be the type of virtuous leader that Confucius held on a pedestal—despite having already established himself as one of the principal Founding Fathers who would eventually be elected the nation’s third president.¹⁶² Jefferson was so influenced by the Confucian emphasis on virtue that during his presidency he included an ancient Chinese poem, edited by Confucius, in his personal scrapbook.¹⁶³

The poem praised an ancient Chinese prince whom Confucius used as an example for other leaders. Jefferson’s inclusion of this specific Chinese poem provides evidence for his positive attitudes toward Confucian ideals.¹⁶⁴ The poem was taken from the Great Learning, which has been called a Handbook on Good Government or Instructions to Rulers.¹⁶⁵

In the same period as when he preserved this poem in his scrapbook, Jefferson created a personal Bible that was partially inspired by Confucian morals. He titled this personal Bible The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. This name likely referenced The Morals of Confucius, a popular book among the European intellectuals that was published in 1689.¹⁶⁶ Jefferson created this Bible to save passages that he believed would best represent Jesus as a moral person.¹⁶⁷ In a letter to Charles Thomson, Jefferson described how he would cut certain texts out of the Bible and rearrange them in a blank book, ordered by time or subject. Jefferson would proudly describe this arrangement as “a more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen.”¹⁶⁸

A separate poem from Jefferson’s scrapbook reveals his attitude toward Confucian meritocracy and the church. The poem disparaged the church as the place where human wisdom and virtue were destroyed. Interestingly, this assertion was juxtaposed with meritocracy: “Merit [never] yet found favor with the Church.”¹⁶⁹

For Jefferson—who tired of metaphysics—Confucianism was an appealing, practical doctrine that advanced private virtue. His acceptance of Confucianism was consistent with his general religious beliefs. On the one hand, Jefferson rejected some forms oforganized religion and certain of its doctrines. On the other, he embraced several of Christianity’s moral precepts. As Jefferson expressed to his fellow Americans, “A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.”¹⁷⁰

Jefferson realized the importance of Confucian moral philosophy in creating a sound and progressive government infrastructure for the United States. He made his efforts to affirm government as “an affirmative obligation to promote the conditions under which the truly meritorious, from all ranks of society, could rise.”¹⁷¹ Jefferson was confident that the new political institutions created by the founders would appropriately serve the new nation. In front of the representatives celebrating his [presidential] victory, Jefferson made the following statement regarding the American government system and good virtues: “inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring an overruling providence” the new nation would have great future and the Americans would be “a happy and a prosperous people.”¹⁷²

Summary

During the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin formulated his theory of combining Confucian political ideas with the traditions of Western social progress. His main role in the making of the Constitution was evidenced by the fact that when General Washington arrived in Philadelphia on May 13, 1787, “his first act was to pay a call on Franklin.”¹⁷³ Franklin had an unprecedented opportunity to apply this theory during the formation of the U.S. government. Franklin was able to translate and combine Confucian political ideas with the Western tradition of social progress into political reality. His theory of social progress was possibly the vital guide in composing the Constitution. Several other founders were similarly inspired by the revival of Confucian principles during the European Enlightenment. They drew upon the Chinese philosopher’s ideas to craft a novel and sound political system for the fledgling nation. Franklin would become regarded as “the most influential in investing the type of society America would become” because of his role in formulating the American Constitution.¹⁷⁴

Indisputable evidence shows that the founders took Confucian political ideas to shape the American political system. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were the staunchest advocates of Confucian principles of political meritocracy. Together, these founders labored to introduce Confucian governing principles to the new nation. As part of a collective effort, Franklin formulated the theory of combining Confucian governing principles with the Western mode of social progress. Adams focused on Confucian ideals regarding the purpose of government. Jefferson espoused the importance of virtuous leaders. Through the founders’ efforts, Confucian political ideas joined the intellectual force of European Enlightenment to reform public institutions, thereby laying a foundational basis for American democracy.

These founders’ understanding of Confucian ideas was ahead of its time. Franklin’s theory would help guide the founders in creating a stablegovernment. Based on Franklin’s theory and drawing from Enlightenment principles, the founders crafted new political mechanisms such as the Electoral College and the separation of power among three branches of government. The founders also set forth a tradition of meritocracy that would become a cornerstone of the American political system. In this way, the founders’ regard for and application of Franklin’s theory helped spread Confucian principles into American democracy.

Taking a step back, one might wonder why the founders turned to Confucius at all. A significant reason was that the founders sought to establish cultural independence from England following the American War of Independence. They were worried that Europeans would continue to “seek to exploit America” for their own advantage, an anxiety that spurred efforts to devise a sound form of government.¹⁷⁵ In Thomas Jefferson’s words, in order to better establish itself as a distinct entity, the United States would need to “fall off the parent stem.”¹⁷⁶ John Adams also expressed his dislike of British character. He wrote, “I Said I was not a British Subject: that I had renounced that Character many years ago, forever, and that I Should rather be a Fugitive in China or Malabar, than ever reassume that Character.”¹⁷⁷

At the Constitutional Convention, Franklin explained to the delegates why the new nation could benefit from Confucian governing wisdom. He told his fellow representatives,

We indeed seem to feel our own Want of political Wisdom, since we have been running all about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient History for Models of Government, and examin’d the different forms of those Republicks, which, having been originally form’d with the Seeds of their own Dissolution, now no longer exist. And we have view’d modern States all round Europe, but find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances.¹⁷⁸

Among the key founders, Franklin was not alone in his desire to look beyond Western traditions of government. Both Adams and Jefferson had concluded that Britain was “too far gone in corruption to be seen with anything but suspicious and hostility.”¹⁷⁹ As Jefferson stated:

I confess then I can neither see what Cicero, Cato &. Brutus, united and uncontrouled, could have devised to lead their people into good government, nor how this aenigma can be solved, nor how further shewn. why it has been the fate of that delightful country never to have known to this day & through a course of five & twenty hundred years, the history of which we possess one single day of free & rational government.¹⁸⁰

Furthermore, one might wonder why descriptions of Confucian influences on the foundation of the American democratic system tend to be absent from history books and classrooms. As Adams noted, Confucian political ideas were still too foreign for the general populace. If a person quoted Confucius in an argument, he would be “ridiculed and abused.”¹⁸¹ In the colonial era, John Bartram was disavowed by the Quakers after he wrote the biography of Confucius in 1758.¹⁸²

Franklin and Jefferson may have privately shared his sentiment that “pure and simple deism” was the best religion for the fledgling republic. But they were reluctant to publish incendiary materials in a devoutly Christian America.¹⁸³

As a result, the founders used alternative terms for Confucian ideas. They made great efforts to find similar ideas from Western works that conveyed Confucian political ideas. It was with originality that Jefferson cut his Bible to reframe passages on morality. Adams would separately use the book of Revelation to promote Christian ideas, stating,

It has been usual with zealous men, to ridicule and abuse all those who dare on this point, to quote the Chinese Philosopher; but instead of supporting their cause; they would Shake it if it could be shaken by their uncandid Asperity; for they ought to remember, that one great end of Revelation, as it is most expressly declared, was not to instruct the wise and few, but the many and unenlightened.¹⁸⁴

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison cited Montesquieu and Blackstone as authorities to justify certain arrangements and procedures that they favored in the making of the American political system.

The formulation of the American Constitution “was a matter of doctrine, ideas, and comprehension.”¹⁸⁵ With the help of Confucian governing ideas, the great concert of the founders created the foundation of the great and unique American political system. George Washington acclaimed that the constitution “is the best Constitution that can be obtained in this Epocha.”¹⁸⁶ Upon seeing that great and unique political institution born in the meeting between the East and West, Benjamin Franklin had tears streaming down his face at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention.¹⁸⁷

CONFUCIAN MERIT SYSTEM AND AMERICAN CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

Most Western countries have adopted some form of the Confucian merit system, one of China’s greatest contributions to modern democracy. Despite now being one of the cultural icons of the West, the United States adopted the Confucian system later than many of its European peers.¹⁸⁸ It was only in 1884 that Congress passed the Pendleton Act, alternatively known as the Civil Service Reform Act, which initiated a long-overdue reform of the U.S. civil service system. The passage of the Pendleton Act marked the U.S. federal government’s embracement of the Confucian merit system.

Although the passage of the Pendleton Act represented the first time the Confucian system gained legal credence within the United States, it was not the first time such a change had been suggested. About a century earlier, Benjamin Franklin had proposed that the fledging nation look to the ancient Chinese merit system for selecting public servants. Unfortunately for Franklin, the nineteenth century marked the rise of cronyism and nepotism within the U.S. government in a period that became notoriously known as the Century of Corruption. Until reform efforts began in 1884, it was the norm for government representatives to exchange public office positions for fees and bribes.¹⁸⁹

This section explores some of the reasons the United States went full circle on its stance regarding the Confucian merit-based system of electing civil servants. It will address Benjamin Franklin’s original proposal and why it was neglected, the state of government and bureaucracy in the United States prior to 1884, and why the United States ultimately revisited Franklin’s plan after nearly a century of neglect.

Benjamin Franklin and the Chinese Merit System, 1784

During the 1780s, the founders of the young American republic faced the tremendous challenge of creating a stablepolitical system to preserve their hard-earned national independence. Soon after the conclusion of the War for Independence, the Founding Fathers realized that the election of capable public servants would be one of the major factors that determined the destiny of their new nation. Many of the founders believed that the ideal government official would not only have a strong educational background but also display exemplary moral virtue.¹⁹⁰

However, this sentiment was not shared by all citizens. In particular, some veterans of the War for Independence sought to establish certain systems that would enable them to pass their honors to their descendants. In 1783, these veterans organized the Society of Cincinnati to counter the prevailing beliefs of the founders.¹⁹¹ Franklin had been aware of the Society of the Cincinnati since at least mid-December, when Pierre-Charles L’Enfant (1754–1825), a French American military engineer, arrived in Paris to deliver George Washington’s letters and began to create a French branch. In March, Lafayette would inform George Washington that “most of the Americans Here are indecently Violent Against our Association…. Doctor Franklin Said little. But Jay, Adams, and all the others warmly Blame the Army.”¹⁹²

Benjamin Franklin expressed uneasiness with the society’s desire to mimic the European hereditary tradition by forming “an order of hereditary knights.”¹⁹³ Franklin warned that the people who made the recommendation realized that it was not right to “distinguish themselves and their Posterity from their Fellow Citizens, and form an Order of hereditary Knights.” He pointed out that their idea and action were directly in “opposition to the solemnly declared Sense of their Country.”¹⁹⁴

Franklin drew examples from Chinese civilization to counter the European heritage-based system. Franklin believed that in China, “honour does not descend but ascends.”¹⁹⁵ Franklin proposed that the fledging nation should look to the Chinese merit system as a model of appointing public employees. He was especially attracted to the notion that a Chinese public servant earned his position based on “his Learning, his Wisdom, or his Valour.”¹⁹⁶ The only channel through which public servants were able to secure their jobs “must have been owing to the Education, Instruction, and good Example afforded him by his Parents that he was rendered capable of Serving the Publick.”¹⁹⁷ He was confident that the Chinese method of selecting public employees would encourage education and moral virtue.¹⁹⁸

The Chinese merit system—the first civil servant program of its kind—was designed according to Confucian political philosophy as a method of ensuring competent and sustainable governance. This system recruited government officials based on merit rather than on familial or political ties and has thus been heralded as one of the world’s first democratic systems.¹⁹⁹ The Chinese Confucian merit system developed during a time of chaos and disunion known in Chinese history as the Six Dynasties Period (220–589 AD). This period began with the collapse of the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD), which left China controlled by aristocratic families on the local and state level,²⁰⁰ and ended after the Sui dynasty (581–681 AD) assumed power. The Sui rulers established the merit system to reduce the prevalence of hereditary aristocratic power. The following Tang dynasty (681–907 AD) built upon the foundation of the Sui rulers by using the merit system to further curb the generational passage of power. The Tang emperors appointed individuals who passed the civil servant examinations to important positions. Officials who gained their positions through familial ties were scorned by society. Later dynasties continued to use the same civil service system to ensure that the best and brightest were selected to work for the central government.²⁰¹

There were unsurprising parallels between the context of the development of the Chinese civil service system and the unstableperiod of American history when Franklin gave his proposal. Franklin’s proposal was not unprecedented, for he had sought guidance from Chinese civilization in prior occasions. Franklin had circulated Confucian moral philosophy in the British colonies long before the war, most notably publishing several chapters of Confucian works in his weekly newspaper, the Pennsylvanian Gazette, in 1737. Franklin also regarded Confucius as his moral example.²⁰² As such, it was natural that Franklin sought guidance from Confucian ideals in response to the surge of European aristocratic traditions in the years following American independence (figure 6.3).

Figure 6.3 Chinese Civil Service Examination in 1590. A detail of a sixteenth-century CE painted scroll showing students taking the civil service examinations that were used to select government officials throughout the history of imperial China. Beijing Palace Museum. 棘院秉衡，余壬、吳鉞描繪，徐顯卿題詠, 時年三十八至四十七, 北京故宮博物院藏 《徐顯卿宦跡圖》, 1590 by Yu Ren, Wu Yue, The Official Career of Xu Xianqing, Peking Palace Museum.

Public Service Positions Should Be Reserved for Federalists: John Adams’s Midnight Appointments

The role of the U.S. federal government was initially limited. The Washington administration was composed only of Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox (1750–1806), and Attorney General Edmund Randolph (1753–1813).²⁰³ Washington believed that only “the best qualified” should work as government officials and chose to pick most of his federal employees from within the budding Federalist Party.²⁰⁴ Given the early stages of party politics within the states, Washington’s pro-Federalist policy was uncontroversial. However, even with his limited government, Washington found that choosing the best civil servants was “the most difficult and delicate part” of his work.²⁰⁵

By the time John Adams succeeded George Washington as the second president of the United States, party dynamics had begun to exert greater influence on the American political sphere. As a federalist himself, Adams continued Washington’s practice of appointing only Federalists to government positions. However, by 1800, the Federalist Party had suffered from irreparable internal divisions under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton.²⁰⁶ Radicals in the Federalist Party accused Adams of failing to enforce the Alien & Sedition Acts, which led to the rise of Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party.²⁰⁷ Jefferson would succeed Adams as the third president, and the Democratic-Republican Party would control both Houses of Congress as well.²⁰⁸

To the sitting lame duck Adams, president-elect Jefferson threatened the power of the Federalists. In his final days before Jefferson’s inauguration on March 4, 1801, Adams took action to preserve as much of the Federalist Party as he could. He passed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which established ten new court districts, three new circuit courts, and forty-two new justices, and took immediate action to appoint Federalists to these new positions. This event would later be known as the Midnight Appointments because Adams employed his judges the night before Jefferson’s inauguration.²⁰⁹

Adams’s Midnight Appointments served as the precedent for selecting public employees based on political affiliations. In this way, Adams might be credited with creating the foundation of what would later be a political patronage system. However, the institutionalization of this American patronage system, later known as the spoils system, can be traced to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson.²¹⁰

Thomas Jefferson’s Response to John Adams’s Midnight Appointments

President Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated on March 4, 1801; unsurprisingly, Adams did not attend his ceremony.²¹¹ Once in power, Jefferson set out to rescind Adams’s Judiciary Act of 1801 and replace the Federalist judges with supporters from his own Democratic-Republican Party. However, although Jefferson reaped many benefits from his political patronage system, he also could not help but damage his reputation permanently when he rejected a request from a job seeker who had been one of his supporters in the election.

The presidential election of 1800 had been an uphill battle for Jefferson. Adams had defeated him four years prior, so the election of 1800 was hard-fought and bitter. The Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties used newspapers and brochures to deliver both personal and political attacks toward the other. Jefferson was on the weaker side of this battlefield of propaganda—during the late 1790s, there were about thirty papers that belonged to the Democratic-Republicans, compared to about 120 that belonged to the Federalists.²¹²

As a result, Jefferson had to work diligently to find other means of support.²¹³ It was around this time that Jefferson met James Callender (1758–1803), a writer and publisher. Callender soon became a “tireless Jeffersonian propagandist.”²¹⁴ In 1792, Callender wrote a piece regarding Hamilton’ s adulterous affair with a colleague’s wife, to which Hamiltonlater confessed. It was later revealed that Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican allies had secretly funded this paper.²¹⁵ Callender would prove to be a devout and skilled propagandist for Jefferson. In his paper, “The Prospect Before Us,” Callender told his readers that voting for Adams was endorsing “war and beggary,” whereas supporting Jefferson would enable “peace and competency.” However, Callender would also pay a price for discrediting the federalists, who convicted him of sedition and sentenced him to nine months’ imprisonment.²¹⁶

Callender believed that given his contributions to the Jefferson campaign, he would be rewarded with a high-ranking government position upon Jefferson’s ascendency to the White House. Callender specifically desired that Jefferson appoint him as the U.S. Postmaster for Richmond, Virginia. The position was already filled, so Callender urged Jefferson to remove the current postmaster and give him the job instead. However, when Jefferson refused Callender’s request, Callender flew into rage and responded, “I now begin to know what ingratitude is.”²¹⁷ He launched a series of virulent attacks against Jefferson from 1801 to 1803. He described Jefferson as a person of “dishonesty, cowardice, and gross personal immorality.”²¹⁸ In the Richmond Recorder, Callender published “The President, Again,” charging that Jefferson “keeps, and for many years past has kept, as his concubine, one of his own slaves.”²¹⁹ Callender alleged that this slave was named Sally, and that her son had features that were suspiciously similar to Jefferson’s own. He detailed how Sally had gone to France with Jefferson and his two daughters, claiming that “the delicacy of this arrangement must strike every person of common sensibility… what a sublime pattern for an American ambassador to place before the eyes of two young ladies!”²²⁰

Callender’s accusation of Jefferson’s affair with Sally would be a tremendous blow to Jefferson’s political reputation.²²¹ There had been some local rumors circulating about such a relationship, but Callender’s article turned Jefferson’s adultery into a widely circulated national story.

Jefferson’s refusal to offer Callender the postmaster position would have significant ramifications on his political career. Callender had caused Jefferson to suffer in a fashion “which hardly encourages men in public life to be scrupulously upright.”²²² Indeed, one scholar claims that almost every scandalous story about Jefferson today can be traced to Callender’s writings; this scholar observed, “Had it not been for Callender, recently revived charges to the same effect probably would never have come to national attention.”²²³ Callender’s charges have lasted through the centuries to represent a dark stain on Jefferson’s career.

“To the Victor Belong the Spoils”: Andrew Jackson and Institutionalization of the Spoils System

The next several presidents after Jefferson all followed in his footsteps by removing public employees based on their political leanings. Presidents James Madison (in office 1809–1817) and James Monroe (in office 1817–1825) were also part of the Democratic-Republican Party. President Monroe passed the Tenure of Office Act of 1820, which legalized the removal of all incumbent officials for the incoming president, regardless of their work performance. The federal government under Madison and Monroe remained small—most of the jobs were clerical and administrative positions in the major northeastern cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

President Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) played another major role in institutionalizing the political patronage system. Jackson, a wealthy cotton planter from Tennessee, was an ardent Jeffersonian. His presidency from 1829 to 1837 was characterized by political corruption. Many governmental job seekers turned his inauguration into chaos; these job seekers were primarily Jackson’s supporters who had been promised federal jobs as rewards for their loyalty during Jackson’s campaign. In order to make good on these promises, Jackson fired about nine hundred government workers, or about 20 percent of all civic servants, at the beginning of his presidency.

The political patronage system received its nickname “the spoils system” during the Jackson administration. Jackson established the “Kitchen Cabinet” by recruiting presidential advisors from among his friends and political allies. Democrat Senator William L. Marcy (1786–1857) of New York defended Jackson’s political appointments, claiming that “to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.”²²⁴ Marcy provided ideological justification for the patronage system and legitimized the practice of changing a significant portion of the American civil servant force based on mere political opinion.

Jackson used the spoils system to create opportunities through which he could bring his political cronies into office. At the time, the post office was the largest department in the federal government. In one year, Jackson fired 423 postmasters, most of whom had extensive records of good service.²²⁵ He also removed 252 of 610 public employees in high positions, representing about 41 percent of the total. When including the lesser positions, Jackson had removed close to 20 percent of all public servants.²²⁶

The Jackson administration attempted to convince the public that the spoils system was for the benefit of all American citizens by making the government more efficient. The reality was that this cronyism led to corruption and graft. Because Jackson gave lucrative jobs to donors, friends, business associates, and other supporters with little qualifications for these jobs, his administration notably saw about $1.2 million embezzled from the New York City Customs House.

By the 1830s, the federal government had become complex due in large part to American’s rapid growth and territorial expansion. With higher and more diverse populations, public demand for an efficient government system increased. However, the spoils system resulted in multitudes of incapable persons in government positions, resulting in corruption and outright theft.

Many believed that Jackson’s use of the spoils system went too far. Thomas Jefferson felt uncomfortable seeing his abuse of the presidential appointing power. He complained that Jackson was a “man of violent passions and unfit for the presidency.”²²⁷

The Spoils System Led to the Century of Corruption

The nineteenth century was widely recognized as the Century of Corruption in American history. The spoils system led directly to government corruption, which fed into regulatory and business corruption. The presidents during this era used the spoils system to reward their supporters and punish their adversaries. Public officials “worked largely behind the scenes to trade support and even subsidies for the tycoons of the day, for large sums of money, patronage, and other rewards.”²²⁸

Although Jackson’s political opponents initially condemned him for introducing political “proscription,” they soon learned to follow his example. Once later presidents were in power, they would take immediate action to imitate Jackson’s precedent in appointing public employees.

In the early 1800s, no position within government was spared from the rapid transition between presidents. Every employee, from the Washington bureau chiefs to village postmasters, was at risk of losing his job after a new president took office. The spoils system became such that assigning jobs for party members who had made campaign contributions was a primary responsibility of the president-elect. Both Democrat and Whig presidents turned over thousands of jobs each presidential cycle, and each new administration saw thousands of job seekers besiege the White House.

The deficiencies of the spoils system had become obvious by the mid-1800s. One of the most prominent examples was that of Samuel Swartwout (1783–1856). As the Collector of the Port of New York, Swartwout had embezzled $210,000 during his first term of office under Jackson. Rather than being punished, Swartwout retained his position during the following van Buren administration. Later, Swartwout escaped to Europe with more than $1,250,000 in misappropriated public funds. Another similar perfidy was the case of Caleb J. McNulty, the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives (1843–1845), who also embezzled U.S. House funds.²²⁹

When William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) became president, about 40,000 office seekers gathered before the Capitol to scramble for about twenty thousand federal jobs. Those who ultimately received positions often did so through party connections; most were untrained for their responsibilities, and many were indifferent altogether.²³⁰

The historical record shows that the two parties had universally used the spoils system to explore their interests. The Harrison and Tyler administrations (1841–1845) fired 50 percent of the presidential class officials. When Democrat James K. Polk (1795–1849) won the office in 1845, he fired 37 percent of the presidential class employees. By this point, there remained only sixteen thousand postmasters in the country. President Polk reappointed almost fourteen thousand, which accounted for 84 percent of all positions. During the administration of Whig president Zachary Taylor (1849–1850), 58 percent of the presidential class officeholders were ousted and replaced.²³¹ When the Democrats returned to power in the subsequent election cycle, the Franklin Pierce administration (1853–1857) removed approximately 89 percent of the Whig presidential class appointees made by Taylor.²³²

The spoils system had tremendous negative impacts on American politics. Party member status became the primary determinant for whether an individual would receive or retain a public job. American political engagement was rising; many citizens were involved in a political party and its respective ideology. These citizens were fiercely loyal to their own parties and opposed to the other. In addition, given the level of bureaucratic expansion that had taken place over the last several decades, it had become the tedious norm for each new president to allocate positions to his party’s office seekers.

Based on President Abraham Lincoln’s correspondence and daily activities, it is fair to say that Lincoln also spent significant energy in applying the spoils system to provide his supporters with federal jobs. Lincoln’s secretary, John G. Nicolay, complained of the size of the crowd looking for government jobs and was haunted “continually by someone who wants to see the President.” These applicants came at all hours during the day to pursue “one of the many crumbs of official patronage.”²³³ President Lincoln and his predecessors realized the role of patronage in building and maintaining their political parties.²³⁴ Lincoln took advantage of the special situation created by the Civil War (1861–1865) to expand the application of the spoils system to military forces. With more military offices at his disposal during the war, Lincoln used “the appointing power at his command as deliberately as he could have been used for practical, and usually partisan, political purpose.”²³⁵

As such, the Lincoln administration discharged many experienced Democrats for primarily political reasons.²³⁶ Lincoln appointed Grenville M. Dodge (1831–1916), an Iowan political leader and railroad entrepreneur, to the position of general in gratitude for his support in the Republican Convention in 1860. The newly hired General Dodge used Lincoln’s Union Army to drive Native Americans out of the prospective path of the Union Pacific Railroad, of which Dodge was a founder. In 1862, the federal government gave the Union Pacific the first federal transcontinental railroad charter, which included massive land grants and monetary subsidies.²³⁷

In fact, the greatest employee turnover within the spoils system occurred within the Lincoln administration from 1861 to 1865. Lincoln ousted 1,457 of 1,520 presidential class appointees, representing 96 percent of the population. Prior to his presidency, Lincoln had been an attorney and lobbyist for the prominent Illinois Central Railroad. After entering the White House, Lincoln appointed George B. McClellan (1826–1885) to be commander of the Union Army. It was no coincidence that McClellan had been a chief engineer and vice president of Illinois Central prior to the war. Lincoln also appointed Ambrose Burnside (1824–1881), former treasurer of Illinois Central, to be McClellan’s successor.²³⁸

Corruption was normal in both the Northern and Southern states during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877) following the Civil War. In the South, dishonest scalawags and carpetbaggers grabbed every opportunity to funnel money into their own pockets.²³⁹ In the North, the infamous Tweed Ring of New York City symbolized the extent of urban corruption.²⁴⁰ In 1867, New Yorkers were shocked by their scandalous customer house and their corrupt state legislature, where “votes were bought and sold like meat in the market.”²⁴¹

A reporter who visited New York’s City Hall in 1866 provided a vivid description of the job seekers as “idle men with their feet upon tables smoking cigars.” He reported that no buildings in the world could compare with those in New York, “wherein the consumption of tobacco in all its forms goes on more vigorously during business hours than the City Hall of New York…. the ‘Expectoration’is everywhere seen.”²⁴²

The Grant administration (1869–1877), which followed the Lincoln presidency, was full of its share of scandals and fraudulent activities as well. Exemplified by the 1869 Black Friday gold speculation ring, it was clear that all federal departments within the Grant administration were corrupt during his eight-year presidency. Nepotism during this period was so widespread that the Grant administration was eventually referred to as Grantism. A significant number of government appointments and employees were essentially divided among forty family members.²⁴³

The Grant administration was a notable example of the spoils system run rampant. All of Grant’s federal departments were faced with financial corruption charges or scandals at one point during his presidency. Grant was fiercely loyal and protective to those whom he had befriended; this fact, coupled with his inability to establish personal accountability within his cabinet and subordinates, expedited many scandals involving political appointees directly associated with the Grant administration.²⁴⁴

Returning to Franklin’s Idea: The Confucian Merit System Was Adopted Eventually

As political corruption created by the spoils system became even more widespread in the 1850s, calls for reform—many of which had arisen from an earlier time—gathered more impetus. Critics of cronyism demanded that the appointment of public servants be removed from the influence of party politics. During the post–Civil War Reconstruction Era, civil service reform gained tremendous momentum. The high-profile scandals in the federal government during this time gave impetus to reformers including George W. Curtis (1824–1892),²⁴⁵ Thomas Jenckes (1818–1875),²⁴⁶ and Dorman B. Eaton (1823–1899).²⁴⁷

George W. Curtis believed that the spoils system “imperils not only the purity, economy, and efficiency of the administration of the Government, but… [also] destroys confidence in the method of popular government by party.”²⁴⁸ He told Americans that the spoils system “creates a mercenary political class, an oligarchy of stipendiaries, and bureaucracy of the worst kind.”²⁴⁹ Curtis would add that such a system “destroys the individual political independence which is the last defence of liberty.”²⁵⁰ His conclusion was based on the fact that the spoils system “excludes able men from public life, and makes a great many of the conspicuous names in politics little illustrative of the real leadership of American ability, enterprise, and progress.”²⁵¹ He believed it was imperative to revoke such a system.

Reformers in the United States were inspired not only by domestic pressure but also by countries that had already adopted the Chinese merit system. By the 1800s, several western European countries had turned to a merit-based system of selecting their officials. American diplomats would bring home news regarding the success of these new European systems. Christopher Columbus Andrews (1829–1922), the American Minister to Sweden from 1869 to 1877, reported that European countries had started a “complete revolution” by introducing the Chinese merit system to civil service. Andrews attested, “Rigorous and impartial tests of qualification have been applied.”²⁵² The system had a transformative role to civil service in Europe; after embracing merit-based selection, what was formerly described as an “incompetent, routine” system would become known for its “efficiency and fidelity.”²⁵³ The strengthening of the character of the civil service system was instrumental in the development of their public governance system and economy.

The American reformers used the European countries’ experiences, particularly Great Britain’s, to persuade the public of the benefits of accepting the merit system. Congressman Thomas A. Jenckes demonstrated to Congress that countries from England to Prussia were relying on merit-based systems. He admonished that the success in European countries that adopt the merit system “is so great and beneficial as to encourage the attempt to obtain the same end in our own.”²⁵⁴

In his report on civil service in Great Britain, Dorman Eaton described how the enlightened European states had reformed their system since 1815. In many parts of Europe, a public employee was recruited according to “his fitness, and irrespective of his birth or party affiliation, to tender his claim upon that service and have its merits impartially considered.”²⁵⁵

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), the prominent English philosopher, political economist, and thinker, was also very critical of the American spoils system; indeed, Mill believed that “the appointments to office, without regard to qualifications, are the worst side of American institutions.”²⁵⁶ He reasoned that the Chinese merit system would reduce political corruption in the United States. He believed that if public positions were given by open competition rather than political affiliation, then the American culture of corruption would necessarily cease.²⁵⁷

Under increasing pressure to reform the crony system, Congress passed a resolution in 1851 to consider some plan to make the promotion of clerks “upon due regard to their qualifications and services.”²⁵⁸ This legislation was the first major indicator that the federal government was willing to address some of the negative externalities created by the spoils system.

By the late 1860s, civil service reform had become more mainstream. Inspired by the reformers, citizens from all social classes lent their support to the rallies for change. The public had become disgusted with the rising number of scandals and the increasing cost of government under existing party practices. Merchants, attorneys, teachers, and scholars alike called for a major restructuring of the government hiring system. The New York Times criticized the spoils system as “costly, inefficient, wasteful and corrupt,” and echoed public demand to bring efficiency into government.²⁵⁹ The Nation²⁶⁰ concluded that there was no reform so much needed as that of the social service sector,²⁶¹ and indicated that competitive examinations would fill government posts with the most qualified people.²⁶²

Congressman Thomas Jenckes was regarded as “the nation’s most prominent leader of the civil service reform movement”²⁶³ and “the father of the civil Service Reform.”²⁶⁴ Jenckes began to work on legislation that would reform the state of civil service in 1864.²⁶⁵ In December 1865, Jenckes introduced his civil service bill,²⁶⁶ which unfolded the efforts to introduce China’s “open competitive examinations for selecting civil service appointees” to the United States.²⁶⁷

Jenckes defended his bill in Congress on May 14, 1868, where he warned that the spoils system had penetrated every nook and cranny of the American political system. Unless this corruption was thoroughly eradicated, Jenckes predicted that the system would end in “political death.”²⁶⁸ The U.S. government could not sustain the regular turnover of more than fifty thousand federal employees for “mere opinion’s sake.”²⁶⁹ Jenckes restated his belief that democracy could not coexist with the spoils system:

The spoils system takes from the government employee those motives to fidelity which in private life are found universally necessary to secure it. As no degree of merit whatever can secure him in his place, he must be a man of heroic virtue who does not act upon the principle of getting the most out of it while he holds it. Whatever fidelity may be found in officeholders must be set down to the credit of unassisted human virtue. In a word, the spoils system renders pure, decent, orderly, and democratic government impossible.²⁷⁰

Jenckes alleged that the Chinese merit system would eliminate “inefficiencies of an overgrown and non-professional bureaucracy.”²⁷¹ He told his fellow congressmen that the Chinese examination system “does away with all personal influence; bribery of all kinds, either by personal recommendation or political reward, becomes impossible.”²⁷² He applauded his proposed merit system as “a wise and practical system regulating the appointments in the different departments of the civil service.”²⁷³ To institutionalize the merit system, Jenckes required that only those who had passed a competitive open examination were qualified for a civil service position. Such an examination would become thoroughly implemented if it represented “the sole channel to the acquirement of office and of political advancement.”²⁷⁴

Before he completed his legislation in 1865, Jenckes had meticulously studied the Chinese civil service system. He had become familiar with not only the process of civil service examination in ancient China but also the content of the tests themselves. Chinese students who passed the test demonstrated their mastery of Confucian classics, as well as the nation’s “Five Classics” and “Four Books.”²⁷⁵ These students also understood the authorized commentaries on all these texts.²⁷⁶ Such knowledge represented the culmination of a grueling process that took years of dedication and hard work.

Jenckes acknowledged that as anywhere else in the world, corruption, venality, and the influence of rank and wealth also existed in China. However, in China public officers only being selected from the successful competitors was implemented. Therefore, “corruption and other sinister influences are, virtually, transgressions of the law.”²⁷⁷

Very impressively, Jenckes was also familiarized with how the Chinese avoided the negative effects of the merit system:

In addition to the division of power, and the checks upon Chinese officers already mentioned, there are other means adopted to prevent combination and resistance against the head of the state. One of them is the law forbidding a man to hold office in his native province, which, beside stopping all intrigue where it would best succeed, has the further effect of congregating all aspirants for office at Pekin, where they come in hope of obtaining some post or succeeding in the examination of literary degrees.²⁷⁸

He continued, in China, “no officer is allowed to marry in the jurisdiction under his control, nor own land in it, nor have a son, or brother, or near relative holding office under him.” In the meantime, an official “is seldom continued in the same station or province for more than three or four years.”²⁷⁹

Jenckes also realized that despite this examination system, not all Chinese students were on equal footing. Some of them had privileges, such as the students from the national institute and members of imperial and certain aristocratic families.²⁸⁰ However, he believed that the system reduced the generational transfer of power because even those with privileges needed to pass the examination. Jenckes wrote that, in cases where favoritism existed in the appointment, equal examination “among the candidates is indispensable”; as a result, “the principle of intellectual qualification preponderates, on the whole, over all other considerations.”²⁸¹ After they passed examinations, “the mandarins are watched with Argus eyes²⁸² and the ears of Dionysius;²⁸³ an account of their merits and demerits is rigorously kept.” Most importantly, to make sure that those officials implement their duties, “the examination of these merits and demerits is instituted every three years by the chamber of investigation.”²⁸⁴

To Jenckes, the Chinese merit system gave individuals the opportunity to achieve the nation’s highest honor. He called on Congress to provide civil service access to all citizens from all spheres of life. He frequently told congressmen that “qualification and merit, equal and exact justice to all, are what we are to seek and to do. Palmam qui meruit ferat… shall be the motto of the United States public service.”²⁸⁵

To impress upon Congress the significance of the system he was proposing, Jenckes recounted how the Confucian merit system saved the Chinese from invasion by foreigners:

Indeed, it may be safely asserted that if this prospect of government employment were not held out to accomplished men, and to them exclusively, letters would not be cultivated to the same extent. With equal truth it may be stated that, if the effect of excessive absolutism in the form of government, of excessive superstition in the form of religion, and of excessive dislike of innovation, had not thus been neutralized by culture and talent and the highest capacity in the civil and military service of the empire, Chinese civilization would have long ago perished beneath the walls that shut it off from the outer world, and the land of Confucius would have fallen a prey to barbarism.²⁸⁶

Jenckes’s attempt at civil service reform faced opposition from those who benefited most under the status quo. One radical adversary to Jenckes was Frederic E. Woodbridge (1818–1888), a U.S. representative from Vermont. Woodbridge tried to highlight what he perceived to be flaws within Jenckes’s bill. According to Woodbridge, the bill sounded great in theory but would crumble in practice; the merit system was suitable for a more aristocratic nation, such as Britain, Belgium, or France, where “the masses are mere machines; but in free America it will never work.”²⁸⁷

Jenckes responded to Woodbridge by asserting that a meritocratic system was truly democratic, for under it, every citizen was entitled and given opportunity to “compete for office; it was the spoils system, built on favoritism, that deserves the term ‘aristocratic.’”²⁸⁸ Jenckes also retaliated that it was ridiculous to oppose the adoption of the merit system since China was a monarchy. Jenckes said:

It has been most strangely objected to this salutary reform that it is in its tendency bureaucratic, exclusive, aristocratic, and that the system was formed under monarchic institutions. Nothing could be said more calumnious. It is our present system that is borrowed from that of monarchies, and gives us the will and choice of the person having the appointing power, and not merit, as the passport to office, as under monarchies the king is the fountain of honor and the giver of employment. No measure could be more republican than that which we now present. The gates of the avenues to the public service are thrown open to all.²⁸⁹

Under the spoils system, it was almost impossible for one to ascend government ranks except through the influence or patronage of the privileged families. At the same time, those public employees did not have job security and continued to “cultivate the favor of the reigning favorites and governing families.”²⁹⁰ The practice of political patronage was contrary to the foundational principles of the United States as a democratic nation, “where the Government is of the people and for the people.”²⁹¹ Therefore, as the U.S. government should serve the American people’s will in the best and most effectual manner, the spoils system “is not a mere solecism, but a positive evil.”²⁹² The spoils system was contrary to popular government.²⁹³ The U.S. government should be administered for the benefit of the whole, with the best instruments, at the least expense, “without regard to the interests of any classes or class, or of persons or partisans.”²⁹⁴ He elaborated that to install the merit system in the U.S. government system was not temporary expediency, or to promote any partisan interest; its intention was to place “this Government in the hands of skillful and honest men, and thus to renew the health and life of the Republic.”²⁹⁵

Jenckes opposed “centralization” under power-hungry presidents, but he also opposed the spoils of localism. In contrast to both, he praised nationalism and argued that civil service created a more integrated and balanced nation.²⁹⁶ The Chinese merit system would stimulate education and bring the most talent into public service. In addition, the system would place service above all considerations of locality, favoritism, patronage, or party.²⁹⁷

Jenckes lost a close vote on his bill in Congress, but he was not discouraged by the setback. Instead, he revamped his approach by broadening his support within the business world.²⁹⁸ Jenckes promoted the idea that civil service reform would reduce corruption and create a friendlier and more reliable business environment.²⁹⁹ After his efforts, a businessman reported that after the election, some who had lost hope several months before “are quite sanguine now for an early favorable result.”³⁰⁰

Jenckes’s bill won a new round of endorsements from newspapers nationwide. Despite its earlier defeat in Congress, Jenckes’s civil service reform continued to garner widespread support. Outgoing Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch (1808–1895) backed the passage of the legislation, as did the powerful Union League Club of New York and the American Social Science Association (ASSA).³⁰¹

Preeminent scholar Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) also publicized his support of Jenckes’s efforts at civil service reform. Emerson expressed an understanding of the Confucian merit system that was reminiscent of Benjamin Franklin. Emerson opined:

China interests us at this moment in a point of politics. I am sure that gentlemen around me bear in mind the bill which the Hon. Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island has twice attempted to carry through Congress, requiring that candidates for public offices shall first pass examinations on their literary qualifications for the same. Well, China has preceded us, as well as England and France, in this essential correction of a reckless usage; and the like high esteem of education appears in China in social life, to whose distinctions it is made an indispensable passport.³⁰²

Jenckes returned to Congress in 1869 optimistic that given his wide base of support, he would be able to influence change in the status quo. After the Johnson administration was replaced by the Grant presidency in 1869, Jenckes reintroduced his original proposal, giving the president power over the commission once again.

George William Curtis, another prominent leader of the reform movement, supported the Jenckes bill in his address at the annual meetings of ASSA in New York in October 1869.³⁰³ That same month, Henry Adams (1838–1918) published his article on “Civil Service Reform” in the North American Review. He accused former presidents of carrying the spoils system to a new extreme. Adams pinpointed the politically powerful Civil War veterans’ group, the Grand Army of the Republic, as aiding Grant in organizing a purge of administrative departments.³⁰⁴

In the third session of the forty-first Congress, the lame-duck session beginning in December 1870, Jenckes offered his most ambitious bill yet. Under his proposal, all government officers—except for cabinet members, ministers abroad, judges, and court clerks—would have to pass competitive examinations to qualify for their positions. Incumbent officers would also have to pass these tests; if they scored below a certain threshold, they would be automatically removed.³⁰⁵ Jenckes’s competitive exam model would apply to 80 percent of public servants, with the remaining 20 percent open to discretionary hires. However, President Grant still enjoyed the power of patronage politics, and Jenckes lost his congressional seat in November 1870.

As cries for reform gained even more momentum, President Grant was forced to offer some concessions. In 1871, Congress authorized President Grant to set regulations for admission to public service positions and appoint the Civil Service Commission. That same year, Grant chose Curtis to head the Civil Service Commission. By that time, civil service reform had become a forefront issue for the United States. Broad public masses had been mobilized to battle against the spoils system. In April 1872, the first competitive examination under the commission’s rules was held for appointments in civil service positions in the cities of New York and Washington, DC.³⁰⁶

In 1872, President Grant managed to convince Congress to establish the U.S. Civil Service Commission, which was designed to set standards and qualifications for various federal jobs. In his annual message to Congress, Grant called for service reform. He claimed that the spoils system failed in selecting fit persons for public service in the United States. The reform of the civil service of the government “will be hailed with approval by the whole people of the United States.”³⁰⁷

After the 1872 election, Congress cut off its funding to the Civil Service Commission while Grant simultaneously suspended it. Although Jenckes was ultimately unable to achieve anything lasting, his bill laid the foundation for the later Pendleton Act. Dorman B. Eaton succeeded Curtis as chair of the first Civil Service Commission and served from 1873 to 1875. During this time, the commission had become ineffectual after Congress had eliminated its funding.³⁰⁸ In 1877, President Hayes entrusted Eaton with the responsibility of spearheading the continued efforts of reforming the spoils system. Eaton began to research the experiences of the British civil service system and realized soon thereafter that the system had its roots in China.

After several months of study in Great Britain, Eaton published his discoveries in his report, Civil Service in Great Britain. In this report, Eaton described the remarkable change that had occurred in Great Britain over the past century due to its adoption of the Chinese merit system.³⁰⁹ For a lengthy period, there had been little corruption among Britain’s public servants. Eaton noted that the merit system would sustain common justice and general education by eliminated patronage and the “old official monopoly.”³¹⁰ George William Curtis praised Eaton’s study” and continued that the unreformed civil service in the United States “was founded upon the theory of the feudal times, that the public services are the property of the ruler.”³¹¹

The elections of 1882 demonstrated the American people’s will to abandon the spoils system and install the merit system. Civil service reform became an important factor influencing the election in several congressional districts. In New York, Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) was elected governor, and Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1918) was elected to the State Assembly. Both of them supported civil service reform. However, the assassination of President James Garfield (1831–1881) was the last straw to bring the spoils system to collapse. Garfield’s assassinator, Charles J. Guiteau (1841–1882), believed that he had been a primary contributor to Garfield’s presidential victory and believed that he should be rewarded an ambassadorship. Guiteau was furious after several unsuccessful attempts to obtain this position and felt humiliated after he was told never to return to the White House again.

The assassination of President Garfield acted as the long-needed catalyst for change. It woke the nation and drove “into the heads of the most hardened political henchmen the idea that there was something disgraceful in reducing the Chief Executive of the United States to the level of a petty job broker.”³¹² The reformers held the spoils system responsible for the assassination of President Garfield. In September 1881, Curtis drafted a letter, pointing out the need of the civil service reform demonstrated by the murder of President Garfield. Former president Hayes and other eminent persons, such as Peter Cooper, signed the letter.

Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886) became president after Garfield’s death. As a supporter of the movement, he continued the cause of civil service reform and lobbied Congress to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act in 1883.³¹³ Eaton drafted the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, which essentially discarded the spoils system, which had been implemented by U.S. governments for a century. From then on, public office appointments were to be awarded on merit demonstrated through competitive examination.³¹⁴

The passage of the Civil Service Act of 1883 marked the end of the spoils system and the acceptance of the Confucian merit system in public service.³¹⁵ For the first time in U.S. history, public service positions were opened to all citizens and the selection of public employees was done through competitive examinations. The Confucian merit system was accepted officially in the United States under the law.

Summary

The acceptance of the Confucian merit system changed the history of the United States. To accept the merit system “is not merely a mode of procedure and an economy, but has become a vital question of principle and public morality, involving the counterpoise and in no small degree the stability of the government itself.”³¹⁶ The merit system elevated the United States to “a new and higher standard in official life.”³¹⁷ It has been recognized that the adoption of the Pendleton Act “amounted to nothing less than [a] recasting of the foundations of national institutional power.”³¹⁸

Through the brief analysis above, the reader will have gained a basic comprehension of the course of events that led to the improvement of the U.S. civil service system from the early 1800s to the Pendleton Act of 1884. It was impossible to build a democratic society on the foundations of the spoils system. When applied to American politics, the spoils system caused tremendous turnover of federal employees with every new presidency. Public employees were chosen based on party affiliation rather than on their knowledge and dedication to their positions. As President Theodore Roosevelt aptly said, the spoils system

was more fruitful of degradation in our political life than any other that could have possibly been invented. The spoils monger, the man who peddled patronage, inevitably bred the vote-buyer, the vote-seller, and the man guilty of misfeasance in office.³¹⁹

It took a great, combined effort to eliminate the spoils system and return the United States to the democratic roots that Franklin had originally envisioned. During America’s Century of Corruption, many presidents struggled with the inefficiencies of the system as well as disgruntled supporters who were denied government positions. Thomas Jefferson suffered a permanent blow to his reputation when he denied James Callender; James Garfield lost his life when he rejected Charles Guiteau. The civil service reform movement elevated the status of president beyond that of a “petty job broker” and restored faith in the nation’s founding principles by allowing any qualified person to serve his or her country.

The reformers’ interest in adopting a Chinese merit system led them to explore various European nations’ experiences designing civil service systems suitable to the demands of their societies. The English influenced these reformers, but they were not completely satisfied by how Great Britain opened its examination to only select groups within its population. Instead, they turned to the creators of the original system, who had insisted that “all offices in China, from the highest to the lowest, [be] thrown open to all those classes of the people who have the requisite mental qualifications.”³²⁰ Therefore, in the United States, the entrance to public service was made available to all willing and able citizens.

CONFUCIAN EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES AND THOMAS JEFFERSON’S TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Jefferson espoused the concept of universal education as early as 1779 in his Bill for More General Diffusion of Knowledge. Jefferson was ahead of his time, but his vision would eventually be realized by the 1900s as the nation approached a universal education system. In recognition of his pioneering efforts, Jefferson would become regarded as a “Founding Father” of both public and democratic education.

Confucius is regarded as one of the greatest teachers in Chinese history, one whose educational principles have influenced schools and pupils over many centuries across the world. In this section, I will examine how these Confucian principles were introduced to the United States and subsequently aided the development of the country’s modern school system. Thomas Jefferson, one of the nation’s Founding Fathers and earliest presidents, was at the forefront of this Confucius-led transformation. Jefferson sought to apply two of Confucius’s core educational principles, meritocracy and universal education, to what was, in his time, an unstandardized and European-centric school system emphasizing the classics.

In recognition of his pioneering efforts, Jefferson would become regarded as both “a founding father of public education”³²¹ and the “founding father of democratic education.”³²²

This section discusses the process through which Jefferson introduced Confucian ideals to the United States following the American Revolution. It begins with a survey of Confucian educational principles, then examines how Jefferson was influenced by such principles.

Confucian Education Principles

Confucius was a teacher and philosopher during a tumultuous period of Chinese history known as the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476/403 BC).³²³ This period was marked by a series of political, economic, and educational transformations as the country developed from a slave-ownership to feudal society. Three aristocratic families fought for control of Confucius’s native state, a territory named Lu on the Shandong Peninsula in eastern China. In the context of this instability, Confucius began to appreciate the role of education in building a stablesociety; as such, he labored to use education as a tool to restore peace and prosperity.

Education is a Priority for the Nation

Confucius believed that education should be one of a nation’s foremost priorities. Effective political governance should rely on not only strong laws and moral leaders but also a cultivated constituency. He cautioned that the former techniques might allow a ruler to garner a favorable reputation, but would be ineffective. The leaders who wished to improve society and build a lasting culture must instead “start from the lessons of the school.”³²⁴

Confucius viewed moral education as the means through which one could improve one’s life and contribute to society. He gave the younger generation three admonitions. The first is that when a youngster sees any virtuous action, he should practice it right away. The second is that when there is an “opportunity of doing a reasonable thing,” he should “make use of it without hesitating.” The third is that he should always endeavor to “extirpate and suppress vice.”³²⁵ He believed that one of the primary functions of education was instilling culture and virtue in future statesmen and government officials. Through preparing righteous leaders and citizens, a strong education system would lead to peace and prosperity. As Confucius indicates, “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.”³²⁶ Confucius’s view of education was likely inspired by the tumultuous era in which he lived, one marked by conflict and disorder. He wanted to educate the people, particularly the leaders. For him, “if he could inspire them with the Sentiments of Virtue, their Subjects would become Virtuous after their Example.”³²⁷

Confucius considered educational quality to be important not only at the individual level but also at the familial and national level. He states in Great Learning 《大学》, one of his four Classics, that good education fortifies self-cultivation, harmony within a family, prosperity of the nation, and development of the world.³²⁸ His educational principles, edited into the Analects by his disciples, emphasized the importance of obtaining a moral education; in his canonical 《诗经》 Book of Songs, the first and perhaps most revered of his texts, Confucius discusses the process of cultivating strong moral character.³²⁹

Universal Education: The First Principle of Confucian Education

For most of Chinese history prior to Confucius, education had been restricted to the aristocratic elite. For example, under the Zhou dynasty (1046–250 BC),³³⁰ only politically distinguished families could afford schools located in government offices and taught by officials. General education was a privilege for the nobility rather than a right for the commoner. Few teachers existed outside of bureaucratic circles.

Confucius rejected the ruling class’s monopoly on education by proposing that it be transformed into a public good. He emphasized the importance of educational equity in individual and societal development. Such a system represented a radical shift from the political ideology, which held education as an aristocratic privilege. Confucius took a democratic approach to education, believing that effective teaching should address the differences in individual talents and abilities.³³¹

Although there would be significant barriers to implementing such a system on a broader scale, Confucius set an important precedent when he declared his teaching “open to everyone, without distinction.”³³² It is of great significance in the world of education; it opened the path for common people to receive education.

Meritocracy: The Second Principle of Confucian Education

One of the earliest examples of administrative meritocracy can be traced to the ancient Chinese civil service examination system.³³³ The Chinese civil service examination system was used in imperial China to select candidates for the state bureaucracy. Confucius had advocated for the use of these examinations because they enabled the selection of statesmen based on merit rather than inheritance,³³⁴ thereby cementing education as the key for social mobility.³³⁵ The civil service examination system became institutionalized during the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) as a way for the government to maintain power over a large, sprawling empire overseen by a complex network of officials.³³⁶

The Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) adopted Confucianism as the basis of its political philosophy. The Han dynasty expanded upon their Qin predecessors by further dividing the civil service exams into three levels: local, provincial, and national. To prepare for these exams, young men rigorously studied music, archery, horsemanship, arithmetic, and rituals. These disciplines would later also encompass military strategy, law, taxation, geography, and the Confucian classics.

The ideals embodied by the civil service exam spread from China to British India during the seventeenth century, before eventually venturing into continental Europe and the United States.³³⁷ The British East India Company was the first European institution that used civil service–style exams to promote its employees. The concept of meritocracy, which reached intellectuals in the West during the Enlightenment, offered an attractive alternative to the traditional European aristocratic regime. Voltaire, one of the great leaders of the Enlightenment, and Francois Quesnay wrote favorably of the idea; Quesnay advocated for an economic and political system modeled after that of the Chinese, and Voltaire even went so far as to claim that the Chinese had “perfected moral science.”³³⁸

Confucian Curriculum

The Confucian curriculum was well structured and progressive to facilitate the synthesis of a variety of subjects. The curriculum was broad and holistic, integrating six skills consisting of Li (礼, rites), Yue (乐, music), She (射, archery), Yu (御, chariot driving), Shu (书, calligraphy), and Shu (数, mathematics). Confucius considered these arts to be interconnected, mutually reinforcing, and practice oriented, and imparted them through a nine-year program that “systematically introduced students to a values-centered, rounded, and comprehensive curriculum.” According to the program, students would first train their “learning aspirations” and ability to analyze texts, before developing the ability to work effectively with others. In later years, students would engage in ongoing dialogues with teachers and peers.³³⁹

Education in Colonial North America

In the American colonies during the eighteenth century, the education patterns followed the examples set by British tradition. Children were primarily educated in their homes, although some towns might have also offered “dame schools” provided by a woman of the town. Formal schools, while uncommon, were not unheard of—the Boston Latin School was founded in 1635, while the Mather School opened in Massachusetts in 1639.³⁴⁰ These academies, typically supported by wealthy parents, would often teach the classics in Greek and Latin. The goal of most education was to provide basic literacy, especially for the purpose of reading the Bible. The great distances that disconnected homesteads scattered along the bays and rivers of Virginia and Maryland “made most of them inaccessible to such schools as were established.”³⁴¹

In the New England colonies, it was commonplace for wealthy colonists to hire tutors for their sons. Alternatively, such boys might have been sent to regional schools for the social elite.³⁴² The Southern colonies followed similar patterns, whereby families assumed the responsibilities of educating their own children and sometimes collaborated to set up communal “field schools.” There were only about ten grammar schools in Georgia by 1770, most of which were taught by ministers. Local newspapers also showed advertisements for private teachers.³⁴³

The colonial education system often drew from British influences. Most schoolbooks from the period were either imported from England or based on English texts. The New England Primer, one of the most widespread educational texts, was reprinted from the English Protestant Tutor. Furthermore, pupils who continued formal education would typically attend Latin Grammar Schools, which were described as “direct copies” of their European counterparts.³⁴⁴

Thomas Jefferson’s Educational Revolution

Thomas Jefferson had long been dissatisfied with the state of the colonial education system. He would often lament to John Adams that the postrevolutionary youths “acquired all learning in their mothers’ wombs.”³⁴⁵ The current system was inadequate at imparting upon youths the foundation necessary for serious academic and intellectual pursuits. Jefferson saw a preponderance of petty academics sprouting upon across the nation, “where one or two men, possessing Latin, and sometimes Greek, a knowledge of the globes, and the first six books of Euclid, imagine and communicate this as the sum of science.”³⁴⁶

Jefferson believed that the independence won through the American Revolution would be short-lived unless the citizens of the new nation could be “enlightened to a certain degree” such that they could be “safe depositories of their own [liberties].”³⁴⁷ As such, Jefferson believed that educational reform was necessary. He committed to transforming the schooling system within his home state of Virginia, and eventually the entire nation. However, any proposals for improving education were daunting, especially for a fledgling nation in the wake of a prolonged domestic war for independence. The diversity of the new nation from both a cultural and geographical perspective compounded the difficulties of establishing an effective and unified school system.³⁴⁸

Jefferson began to develop his thoughts on the American education system when he served in the Virginia legislature in 1779. By 1820, he had formulated his views through four bills proposed to the General Assembly of Virginia (1779); a Bill for Establishing a System of Public Education (1817); his Rockfish Gap Report (1818); and in a series of letters to correspondents that included Peter Carr, John Banister, and John Adams. The consistent theme of all of Jefferson’s works and musings was to promote educational equality and improve quality across the nation.

In 1779, Jefferson submitted the Bill for More General Diffusion of Knowledge to the Virginia State Legislature. This bill proposed a novel education system that would provide three years of general education for all “free children,” regardless of gender. In 1781, Jefferson further documented his educational plan in the Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he expressed his belief that all children should receive an education. Some scholars have noted that these notes were “the most important scientific and political book written by an American before 1785.”³⁴⁹

Jefferson’s proposals typically followed several key themes. In particular, he believed that basic education should be available for all; that the talented should be able to pursue higher education through public support; and that education was critical for the individual and public good. Below, we consider Jefferson’s principles in greater depth.

Education: The Vehicle for Instilling or Strengthening Virtue

Like Confucius, Jefferson viewed education as a vehicle for instilling and strengthening moral character.³⁵⁰ Jefferson sought to reduce the role of the national government in its citizens’ lives, but an effective system of limited governance would require an educational system that cultivated positive virtues and character. The education system would effectively replace the government’s role in establishing order by imparting the knowledge and moral aptitude necessary for self-governance. Jefferson believed that democracy rested in education. He alleged that through education, “a majority would find its way to the right place.”³⁵¹ Jefferson stressed the importance of education in cultivating moral virtues and protecting against the “germ of corruption.”³⁵²

As Jefferson noted in his Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia, education enabled citizens “to form… habits of reflection and correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to others and of happiness within themselves”:³⁵³

[In a republic, according to Montesquieu in Spirit of the Laws, IV, ch.5,] virtue may be defined as the love of the laws and of our country. As such love requires a constant preference of public to private interest, it is the source of all private virtue; for they are nothing more than this very preference itself…. Now a government is like everything else: to preserve it we must love it…. Everything, therefore, depends on establishing this love in a republic; and to inspire it ought to be the principal business of education; but the surest way of instilling it into children is for parents to set them an example.³⁵⁴

Jefferson Promoted Universal Education and Merit System

From 1779 until his death in 1826, Jefferson would repeatedly emphasize the importance of universal education and meritocracy. He maintained that all citizens, regardless of wealth, should have the same right to basic general education. To provide education to the poor and uneducated, Jefferson proposed a system of public schools subsidized through tax revenues. He believed that such a system would provide each citizen with “an education proportioned to the conditions and pursuits of his life.”³⁵⁵ Basic learning would be important in allowing each man to judge and vote intelligently on matters of regional and national importance.³⁵⁶

During Jefferson’s stay in Paris between 1781 and 1785, he corresponded with George Washington about his first education bill, which had made limited progress in the Virginia legislature since its introduction in 1779. Jefferson would repeatedly express the importance of a universal education system, once telling Washington, “It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction.”³⁵⁷

The general objective of Jefferson’s educational scheme was to provide instruction adapted to each student’s skills and ability to learn. Most students would receive a practical education that provides basic literacy and understanding of society. This basic system of education would ensure that citizens were educated enough to fulfill their needs and be sufficient for political participation. After graduating from general education, students would be expected to pursue vocations. Girls would learn homemaking from their mothers, while boys would learn trade skills from their fathers or through apprenticeships.³⁵⁸

For pupils who demonstrated evidence of belonging to the “learned class,” elementary education would serve as the foundation for further study. These boys, whom “nature endowed with genius and virtue,” would require more advanced preparation to qualify them for their varied pursuits and duties in a republican society.³⁵⁹ Jefferson expressed his desire for a merit system in which the “highest degrees of education” would be “given to the [highest] degrees of genius.”³⁶⁰ A secondary education system would be implemented to ensure that the talented and virtuous, and not simply the wealthy and wellborn, would have opportunities to become statesmen. Jefferson summarized this part of his plan in his Notes on the State of Virginia, written in 1781. He reminded of the importance of “selecting the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor,” because he believed that “the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.”³⁶¹

In the early 1800s, Jefferson discussed a more elaborate educational proposal with John Adams. Jefferson described three tiers of students within his proposed scheme: the first consisted of students who developed basic literacy and arithmetic skills, the second of pupils who would receive higher education at the public expense, and the third of the brightest pupils who would learn “all the useful sciences” in universities.³⁶² Jefferson expanded his idea further in A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge:

And whereas it is generally true that that people will be happiest whose laws are best, and are best administered, and that laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expence, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expence of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided to the weak or wicked:³⁶³

Jefferson ultimately hoped to replace the aristocracy of wealth with a “natural aristocracy” based on virtue and talent. In his autobiography, Jefferson charged that the former brought “more harm and danger than benefit to society,” and reasoned that the latter was “essential to a well-ordered republic.”³⁶⁴ He believed that replacing the monopoly of education opportunities was crucial for the “development of… a free society for people to have open minds,” and sought to establish an accompanying merit system that rewarded intellectual ability rather than birthright.³⁶⁵

Jefferson wanted to replace the heritage aristocracies that had existed in the European tradition with the natural aristocracies that would form out of ability. On the one hand, he introduced a universal education system, and on the other hand, he planned to choose students according to their talents. Jefferson advocated universal K–12 education but sought to identify the best students at several levels and provide additional education to just the “most promising subjects.”³⁶⁶ Jefferson believed that merit would surface unless it was stifled by a system of class and privilege upheld by law.³⁶⁷

Jefferson’s Curriculum: European Classics, History, Modern Language, and Science

Jefferson recommended a curriculum with specific focus on Roman and Greek literature, which likely reflected his affinity for the subjects stemming from his own childhood education. Many of Jefferson’s contemporaries would have begun learning the classical languages by age eight; Jefferson himself started school when he was five, and was studying Latin, Greek, and French around age nine. He would later continue his studies of history, science, and philosophy at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.

Drawing from his own experience, Jefferson further prescribed a curriculum emphasizing science, history, and other practical skillsets. He also proposed that public school students learn the secular sciences rather than the Bible. While seemingly controversial, this suggestion was not unique. During this time, Benjamin Franklin had also expressed a desire to transform the “narrow, humanistic-religious-philosophical” American educational system into a modern structure focused on languages and sciences.³⁶⁸

Jefferson found value in providing the strongest students with a generalist education before having them specialize in any particular field. He noted that the subjects of American education should further include “classical knowledge, modern languages, chiefly French, Spanish, and Italian; Mathematics, Natural philosophy, Natural history, Civil history, and Ethics.”³⁶⁹ He explained his rationale for developing such a broad knowledge base to his friend, W. C. Rives: “Nothing can be sounder than your view of the importance of laying a broad foundation in other branches of knowledge whereon to raise the superstructure of any particular science…. Science is more important in a republic than in any other government.”³⁷⁰ Jefferson’s ideal curriculum incorporated European classical influences while simultaneously emphasizing the development of modern skills necessary to foster the development of the fledgling nation.

Jefferson’s Educational Reforms Were Based on Confucian Educational Principles

In developing his educational principles, Jefferson was significantly influenced by the “experience of other ages and countries”; in his mind, ideas were “like fire… not to be confined in one country or on one continent.”³⁷¹ The few surviving letters of Jefferson’s youth (written between 1760 and 1764) tell us “nearly all we know about him firsthand before the age of twenty one, read much Society Page: the names in the social pageant are without exception those of the best Virginia families.”³⁷² Although he was influenced by his own European upbringing, Jefferson recognized the flaws of the old system and opposed sending promising American youth to study overseas. Jefferson perceived a European education as detrimental to one’s knowledge, morals, health, habits, and happiness.³⁷³ He stated:

Let us view the disadvantages of sending a youth to Europe. To enumerate them all would require a volume. I will select a few. If he goes to England he learns drinking, horse-racing and boxing. These are the peculiarities of English education. The following circumstances are common to education in that and the other countries of Europe. He acquires a fondness for European luxury and dissipation and a contempt for the simplicity of his own country; he is fascinated with the privileges of the European aristocrats, and sees with abhorrence the lovely equality which the poor enjoys with the rich in his own country: he contracts a partiality for aristocracy or monarchy; he forms foreign friendships which will never be useful to him, and loses the season of life for forming in his own country those friendships which of all others are the most faithful and permanent: he is led by the strongest of all the human passions into a spirit for female intrigue destructive of his own and others happiness, or a passion for whores destructive of his health, and in both cases learns to consider fidelity to the marriage bed as an ungentlemanly practice and inconsistent with happiness: he recollects the voluptuary dress and arts of the European women and pities and despises the chaste affections and simplicity of those of his own country; he retains thro’ life a fond recollection and a hankering after those places which were the scenes of his first pleasures and of his first connections; he returns to his own country, a foreigner, unacquainted with the practices of domestic œ conomy necessary to preserve him from ruin; speaking and writing his native tongue as a foreigner, and therefore unqualified to obtain those distinctions which eloquence of the pen and tongue ensures in a free country.³⁷⁴

Several other Founding Fathers corroborated Jefferson’s distaste of the European system. For instance, Franklin also scorned European luxury³⁷⁵ and claimed that a European upbringing would make an American “suspect to [his] own people.”³⁷⁶

William Jarvis articulated to Jefferson the important role that Confucius played in Chinese education, “the comparative happy state of China, with the rest of Asia, does as much honor to his [Confucius’s] Philosophical Wisdom as to the goodness of his intentions.”³⁷⁷

It is likely that Jefferson sought some guidance from the principles of Confucian education when he considered reforms to the American system. Like Confucius, Jefferson sought to distinguish between laborers and the learned aristocracy by merit rather than birth or inherited wealth.³⁷⁸ Also similar to Confucius, Jefferson believed that an ignorant citizenry would eventually succumb to tyranny. Jefferson proposed a democratic, merit-based system in which education was provided equitably based on an individual talent. By creating an educational system with high standards, Jefferson hoped to strengthen the foundations of democracy within his new nation. Scholars have identified similarities between Jefferson’s proposed system and the Chinese civil service examinations, describing the former as the “keystone of the arch of our government.”³⁷⁹

Jefferson was also inspired by Enlightenment philosophies, which were influenced by Confucianism. For example, during the Enlightenment period, European scholars discovered that the Chinese had already virtually abolished hereditary aristocracy. French and British anti-monarchists would draw from this precedent in their own quest to abolish hereditary privilege, thereby leveraging Confucianism to promote the rebirth of European democracy.³⁸⁰

From 1785 to 1789, Jefferson served as an American diplomat in Paris, which represented one of the centers of the Enlightenment during a period in which it was in full force. Jefferson agreed with the prevailing admiration of Confucius by several leading European intellectuals, including Voltaire. Jefferson was especially drawn to Voltaire and Confucianism; in 1814, Jefferson’s personal library contained a set of Voltaire’s complete works, as well as eight books related to China.³⁸¹ In his later years, Thomas Jefferson also managed through American diplomats in China to obtain books on China. He even bought a Chinese language book.³⁸² On July 19, 1818, Jefferson received two books, including Robert Morrison’s A View of China, for Philological Purposes; containing A Sketch of Chinese Chronology, Geography, Government, Religion & Customs. designed for the use of persons who study the Chinese Language, Macao, 1817 and Morrison’s Dialogues and Detached Sentences in the Chinese Language; with a free and verbal Translation in English. collected from various sources. Designed as an Initiatory Work for the Use of Students of Chinese, Macao, 1816.³⁸³ He later expressed his appreciation for Charles J. Ingersoll (1782–1862), an American lawyer, writer, and politician. Jefferson told him, “I found here your favor of July 4. with the two Chinese works from mr Wilcox.”³⁸⁴ James Madison reported that Congress collected the book by Jean Baptiste Du Halde (1674–1743), The General History of China.³⁸⁵

In a letter to Adams, Jefferson conveyed his admiration for a meritocratic government system:

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. the grounds of this are virtue & talents. formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. but since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. there is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. the natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. and indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society.³⁸⁶

The impact of Confucian educational principles was also evident through Jefferson’s praise of Chinese government for its ability to provide “the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government.”³⁸⁷ Jefferson’s sentiment echoed those of Enlightenment intellectuals, who admired how the Chinese government was managed by a “group of highly educated scholars” rather than by an inefficient feudal aristocracy.³⁸⁸ These intellectuals were further impressed by what they perceived as checks and balances within the Chinese government, wherein the Chinese emperor was “limited by [the Confucian] political philosophy that the people are the most important element in the state, the sovereign [the least].”³⁸⁹

The late Professor Herrlee G. Creel (1905–1994), a distinguished scholar on Confucius, compared the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson with those of Confucius. According to Dr. Creel, both men

were alike in their impatience with metaphysics, in their concern for the poor as against the rich, in their insistence on basic human equality, in their belief in the essential decency of all men (including savages), and in their appeal not to authority by to “the head and heart of every honest man.”³⁹⁰

Dr. Creel also pointed out, “Jefferson’s statement that ‘the whole art of government consists in the art of being honest’is amazingly like Analects 12.17, and other such examples could be cited.”³⁹¹

Jefferson’s approval of Confucian educational principles was also based on his knowledge about China, as demonstrated through the various Chinese influences within his life. In addition to owning several books on Chinese culture at a time when China remained a distant entity, Jefferson had also drawn from Chinese architecture when designing the grounds of his Virginia home, Monticello. Jefferson had also once included a poem from the Confucian classics in his journal, demonstrating his familiarity with the scholarly works. Therefore, although limited direct records exist of the extent to which Jefferson studied Confucianism, there is enough piecemeal evidence to indicate that he was influenced by Chinese cultural works.

As Jefferson worked to refine his educational plan, he also searched for manuscripts on China in numerous Paris bookstores. He also sent James Madison a copy of Conquista de la China por el Tartaro por Palafox,³⁹² a book describing topics such as Chinese culture, religion, and mannerisms. Jefferson’s gift to Madison provides further evidence that the former had significant familiarity with China.

Jefferson must have found that the Manchu, who occupied China, expressed their respect for the Chinese merit system and the officials selected by the system recorded by the book, the Manchu (Tartars)

“kept up the Dignity of Calao and Mandorin; but none attain thereto, but by Merit and Election; and these ought all to be persons of high Reputation and Merit, of which the Tartars would be first well satisfied and informed.”³⁹³

In the meantime, Chinese intellectual power must have left very deep impression on Jefferson when he pushed his educational revolution. In the book, he read that in 1647,

there were above three hundred Scholars who took the degree of Doctor, in the City of Nanking, as heretofore they did at Peking; and above 600. Others were admitted as Licentiates, besides a great number of those who took the degree of Bachelor. It is not in Europe only, that there is such store of Doctors and Bachelors.³⁹⁴

Summary

Jefferson’s educational revolution was ultimately idealistic for its time; Confucian educational principles were not widely acknowledged or accepted within the fledgling nation, and several of Jefferson’s contemporaries considered him part of “the dissenting tradition in American education.”³⁹⁵ Jefferson was regarded as a “visionary and a dreamer,”³⁹⁶ and his 1779 Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge was deemed too foreign for the Virginia House of Delegates.

Jefferson dreamed of creating an “aristocracy of worth and genius”³⁹⁷ through a merit system that would replace the European monarchial tradition. He believed that only a well-educated populace would be able to maintain the hard-won independence that he had helped achieve from England. In thinking about the curricula of his education system, Jefferson designed holistic syllabi that drew from Roman and Greek classics, history, and science; he believed that by combining the Confucian educational principles with traditional European literature and modern scientific knowledge, he could cultivate productive future generations of U.S. citizens.

While Jefferson himself experienced little success to show for his efforts, his vision for American education eventually became a reality in the 1850s. Jefferson was influential as the starting point of this gradual movement, and later generations would build upon the foundation he set. For example, scholars such as Dustin Hornbeck have acknowledged the role of Horace Mann, the first superintendent of public schools in Massachusetts, in carrying on Jefferson’s efforts to transform American education.³⁹⁸

However, although Jefferson’s specific vision of education was ahead of its time, his general sentiments were consistent with the political and ideological climate within America. Many of the new nation’s intellectual elite rejected the “luxury and corruption” of the Old World and sought to drive “rapid improvement in all of the arts that embellish human nature.”³⁹⁹

Jefferson’s educational principles were part of a broader ideological shift that replaced the historic Western emphasis on birthright with systems of merit-based succession. His efforts contributed to the emergence of a “[distinct] American character with new sets of values,”⁴⁰⁰ one that was further removed from its European roots and was prepared to craft its own national identity.

NOTES

1. John E. Wise, The History of Education: An Analysis Survey from the Age of Homer to the Present (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 350.

2. Dave Wang, “The U.S. Founders and China: The Origins of Chinese Cultural Influence on the United States,” Education About Asia 16, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 5–11.

3. Gary Kowalski, “Confucius, Baseball and Apple Pie,” American Creation (blog), March 26, 2010, http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2010/03/confucius-baseball-and-apple-pie.html.

4. Benjamin Franklin, Letter to George Whitefield, July 6, 1749, http://www.historycarper.com/1749/07/06/the-example-of-confucius.

5. Patrick Mendis, Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a Pacific New World Order (New York: United Press of America, 2013), 50.

6. Marvin Olasky, Fighting for Liberty and Virtue (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1996), 142.

7. The Morals of Confucius: A Chinese Philosopher, Who Flourished above Five Hundred Years before the Coming of our LORD and Saviour JESUS CHRIST. Being One of the Choicest Pieces of that Nation, 2nd. ed. (London: Printed for T. Horne, at the South Entrance into the Royal Exchange, Cornhill, 1691), 61.

8. The Founders’ Constitution, Volume 1, Chapter 18, Document 6, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s6.html, University of Chicago Press, The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Harry Alonzo Cushing, 4 vols. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904–1908).

9. Alexander Hamilton, “Washington’s Farewell Address,” The Works of Alexander Hamilton (Federal Edition), ed. Henry Cabot Lodge, vol. 8, 1774 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904).

10. Benjamin Rush, The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush, ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947).

11. Benjamin Franklin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston: Tappan, Whittemore and Mason, 1840), X:297, April 17, 1787.

12. Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792.

13. John Adams, Letter to Zabdiel Adams, June 21, 1776.

14. John Adams, Letter to Mercy Warren, April 16, 1776, http://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/john-adams-quotes-3.html#ixzz1xyBN7z8K.

15. John Adams, Novanglus Letters No. III, 1774.

16. John Adams, October 11, 1798, letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1854), 9:229.

17. James Madison, “The Alleged Tendency of the New Plan to Elevate the Few at the Expense of the Many Considered in Connection with Representation,” The Federalist 57, New York Packet, Tuesday, February 19, 1788.

18. Benjamin Franklin, Motto of the University of Pennsylvania.

19. “John Adams to Mercy Warren, 16 Apr. 1776, Warren-Adams Letters 1:222–23,” The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, chap. 18, doc. 9, University of Chicago Press, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s9.html, Warren-Adams Letters, Being Chiefly a Correspondence among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren, vol. 2, 1778–1814. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 73. (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1925).

20. James Madison, “Virginia Ratifying Convention,” The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, chap. 13, doc. 36, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s36.html.

21. Thomas Jefferson, “Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book,” in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Second Series (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

22. Morals of Confucius, 70.

23. Ibid., 72.

24. Dave Wang, “From Confucius to the Great Wall: Chinese Cultural Influence on Colonial North America,” Asia-Japan Journal, 10th Anniversary Special Issue (March 2011): 117–25, Asia Japan Research Center, Kokushikan University; Wang, “Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Chinese Civilization,” Virginia Review of Asian Studies (2009), https://virginiareviewofasianstudies.com/archived-issues/2009-2/; Dave Wang, “Exploring Benjamin Franklin’s Moral Life,” Franklin Gazette 17, no. 1 (Spring 2007).

25. Benjamin Franklin, “From the Morals of Confucius,” Pennsylvania Gazette, February 28 to March 7, 1738.

26. Franklin told Whitefield, I am glad to hear that you have frequent opportunities of preaching among the great. If you can gain them to a good and exemplary life, wonderful changes will follow in the manners of the lower ranks; for, Ad Exemplum Regis, &c. On this principle Confucius, the famous eastern reformer, proceeded. When he saw his country sunk in vice, and wickedness of all kinds triumphant, he applied himself first to the grandees; and having by his doctrine won them to the cause of virtue, the commons followed in multitudes. The mode has a wonderful influence on mankind; and there are numbers that perhaps fear less the being in Hell, than out of the fashion. Our more western reformations began with the ignorant mob; and when numbers of them were gained, interest and party-views drew in the wise and great. Where both methods can be used, reformations are like to be more speedy. O that some method could be found to make them lasting! He that shall discover that, will, in my opinion, deserve more, ten thousand times, than the inventor of the longitude. Franklin to George Whitefield, Philadelphia July 6, 1649, reprinted from The Evangelical Magazine XI (1803), 27–28; also AL (fragment): American Philosophical Society, http://www.franklinpapers.org/Franklin/framedVolumes.jsp.

27. Paine was the editor of the magazine. The works were composed based on the three works written by some seamen who had been to China, including A Voyage to China and the East Indies, A Voyage to Suratte, and Account of the Chinese Husbandry, were “published as a unit in Swedish in 1757.” They were translated into German in 1765 and into English in 1771. A. Owen Aldridge, The Dragon and the Eagle: The Presence of China in the American Enlightenment (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 34.

28. The Morgan Library in New York City possesses a manuscript in Bartram’s hand titled Life and Character of the Chinese Philosopher Confucius.

29. According to John Bartram, Confucius had been the greatest moral as well as practical philosopher that ever lived, and he excelled Pythagoras (570–495 BC—writer) in pursuit of religion and morals. Confucius was of the most exemplary sobriety and chastity of life, was endured with every virtue and free from every vice, and showed the greatest equableness and magnanimity of temper even under the most unworthy treatment. His whole doctrine tended to restore human nature to its original dignity and that first purity and luster which it had received from heaven and which had been sullied and corrupted. He taught as means to obtain this end to honor and fear the Lord of Heaven, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to subdue irregular passions and inclinations, to listen to reason in all things, and to do or say nothing contrary to it. He taught kings and princes to be fathers to their subjects, to love them as their children, and he taught subjects to reverence and obey their kings and governors with the honor and affection due to their parents…. In short, Confucius was the original ultimate end of all things and the one supreme holy, intelligent, and invisible being. Cited in Aldridge, Dragon and the Eagle, 32.

30. Edwin Wolf, James Logan, 1674–1751: Bookman Extraordinary, An exhibition of books and manuscripts from the library of James Logan, supplemented by his writings anddocuments relating to the history of the Bibliotheca Loganiana. In honor of the visit to Philadelphia of the seventh International Congress of Bibliophiles (Philadelphia: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1971), 41.

31. Ibid., 4.

32. A. Owen Aldridge, American Literature: A Comparatist Approach (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 289–90.

33. Jedidiah Morse, The American Universal Geography; or a View of the Present Situation of the United States and of all the Empire, Kingdoms, States, and Republics in the Known World, 2nd., vol. 2 (Boston: Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer Andrews, 1796), 499.

34. Ibid.

35. Aldridge, Dragon and the Eagle, 37.

36. The Columbian Magazine, May 1788, 257–63.

37. According to the author, Confucius “recommended the contempt of riches and outward pomp; he endeavored to inspire magnanimity and greatness of soul” and to reclaim his countrymen from voluptuousness to reason and sobriety. “Kings were governed by his counsels, and people reverenced his as saint.” New Hampshire Magazine 2 (1793): 199–203.

38. Elizabeth Drinker, Extracts from the Journal of Elizabeth Drinker, Period from 1759–1807, ed. Henry D. Biddle (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1889), 267, https://archive.org/details/extractsfromjou00dringoog.

39. Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, http://www.ushistory.org/Franklin/autobiography/.

40. In the years soon after the revolution, membership continued to expand. Members have served in all the major offices of the United States and many state governments. Some, including Thomas Jefferson, were alarmed at the apparent creation of a hereditary elite; membership eligibility is inherited through primogeniture and excludes enlisted men and in most cases militia officers, unless they were placed under “State Line” or “Continental Line” forces for a substantial period. Benjamin Franklin was among the society’s earliest critics, although he would later accept its role in the republic and join the society under honorary membership after the country stabilized. He voiced concerns about not only the apparent creation of a noble order but also the society’s use of the eagle in its emblem as evoking the traditions of heraldry.

41. Benjamin Franklin, to Sarah Bache (unpublished) Passy, Jan. 26th, 1784. In The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Yale University. See also http://www.franklinpapers.org/Franklin/framedVolumes.jsp; see also Mark Skousen, ed., The Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2006), 311–12.

42. Ibid.

43. 朱熹， 7; 吴国珍， 16 and 杨伯峻, 17.

44. Benjamin Franklin, to Madame Brillon, “The Ephemera,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-27-02-0408.

45. Thomas Paine, “Of the Old and New Testament,” The Prospect (March 31, 1804). See also Complete Writings, vol. 2, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Garden City Press, 1945), 805.

46. Ibid.

47. Thomas Paine, The Political Works of Thomas Paine, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1864), 15. Paine quoted from Confucius’s following teaching maxims to Yan Yuan, one of his well-known students: “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.” (Section 12 of the Analects), http://wengu.tartarie.com/wg/wengu.php?no=294&l=Lunyu; see also 朱熹， 93; and 杨伯峻, 174.

48. Thomas Paine, Federal City, Lovett’s Hotel, 1802.

49. From John Adams, December 25, 1813, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, vol. 7:28, November 1813 to September 1814, https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/.

50. Benjamin Rush, “Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, 1798,” The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush, ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), 87–89, 92, 94–96, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s30.html.

51. Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 33, 17 February to 30 April 1801 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 148–52, http://www.princeton.edu/~tjpapers/inaugural/infinal.html.

52. America’s FoundingDocuments, http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html.

53. King Wu of Zhou (周武王) was the first king of the Zhou dynasty of ancient China. The chronology of his reign is generally thought to have begun around 1046 BC and ended three years later in 1043 BC.

54. Sarah Schneewind, “Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and King Wu’s First Great Pronouncement,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 19 (2012): 75–91.

55. Colin Wells, “Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbooks: Poems of Nation, Family, and Romantic Love Collected by America’s Third President,” Early American Literature 42, no. 3 (November 2007): 626.

56. For the Chinese poem that Jefferson collected, see ibid., 27.

57. 朱熹， 7. 吴国珍, 16.

58. Dave Wang, “All Posterity Will Remember My Legacy: Thomas Jefferson and a Legendary Chinese Prince,” Huaren E-Magazine (Australia), September 2008.

59. The Chinese character Feng, 风 “wind,” has been interpreted as “mores” or “customs. The character may also be read as “influence.” This is particularly the case of Confucian commentators who stress the poems’ political significance. The section of the Wind of State contains 160 songs and is subdivided geographically into fifteen sections, one for each of fifteen states in ancient China. Most of them deal, however, with the lives of the common people—their work, play, festivities, joys, and hardships. The Wind of Wei (魏风) is number 10 from the “Wind of State （国风）.” This poem as metaphor expresses the grateful sentiments of the people of Wei to Duke Hwan, who rescued them from invasion.

60. Great Learning is one of the four books edited by Confucius, including The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects, and The Mencius.

61. Gene Allen Smith, “Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy,” Journal of American History 94, no. 1 (June 2007): 260–61.

62. “Salma Hale’s Notes on his Visit to Monticello, [after 1818],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-13-02-0015-0005. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. J. Jefferson Looney, vol. 13, 22 April 1818 to 31 January 1819 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 26–29.

63. Joseph J. Ellis, American Creation: Triumph and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), 3.

64. “From John Adams to James Warren, 9 January 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-18-02-0286. Original source: The Adams Papers, Papers of John Adams, ed. Gregg L. Lint, Sara Martin, C. James Taylor, Sara Georgini, Hobson Woodward, Sara B. Sikes, Amanda M. Norton, vol. 18, December 1785–January 1787 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 538–40.

65. Cokie Roberts, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 190.

66. Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Vintage, 2002), 9.

67. Ibid.

68. Paul Merrill Spurlin, Montesquieu in America, 1760–1801 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1940), 144.

69. Russel Blaine Nye, The Cultural Life of the New Nation, 1776–1830 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), 5.

70. Shane J. Ralston, American Enlightenment Thoughts, https://www.iep.utm.edu/amer-enl/.

71. Ibid.

72. Catherine Drinker Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787 (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1966), 112.

73. There are several cases throughout U.S. history when candidates who won the popular vote did not become president. Back in 1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote; however, he could not win the electoral vote. In the end, John Quincy Adams won the election. Again in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, who lost the popular vote, won the election by the Electoral College. In recent years, there were two presidential elections where the candidates who won the popular vote lost in the Electoral College. In the 2000 election, Al Gore received more than half a million more total votes nationally than George W. Bush. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump; both lost the election because they lost in the Electoral College.

74. Noah Webster, An examination into the leading principles of the Federal Constitution proposed by the late convention held at Philadelphia. With answers to the principal objections that have been raised against the system (Philadelphia: Printed and sold by Prichard & Hall, in Market Street the second door above Laetitia Court, M.DCC.LXXXVII [1787]).

75. Gilbert Reid, “Revolution as Taught by Confucianism,” International Journal of Ethics 33, no. 2 (1923): 193.

76. Confucius, Analects, 2.1, http://www.confucius.org/lunyu/.

77. Analects, 3:19.

78. Patrick Zukeran, A Brief Overview and Biblical Critique of Confucius, https://evidenceandanswers.org/article/a-brief-overview-and-biblical-critique-of-confucius/.

79. Analects, 2.1.

80. Reid, “Revolution as Taught by Confucianism,” 200.

81. 《荀子 · 王 制》：” 传 曰：’君者 舟也，庶人 者水也，水 则载舟，水 则覆舟。’此之谓也。” “Xunzi·Wangzhi”: It has been said, “rulers are like boats, people are like water, water can support boats, it can also overturn them.”

82. Reid, “Revolution as Taught by Confucianism,” 190.

83. Analects, 4.12.

84. Analects, 4.16.

85. Analects, 4.5.

86. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, ed., The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 31.

87. Zukeran, Brief Overview.

88. Bill Schwarz, The Expansion of England: Race, Ethnicity and Cultural History (New York: Routledge, 1996).

89. Ibid.

90. Dave Wang, “Confucius in the American Making: The Founders’ Efforts to Use Confucian Moral Philosophy in Their Endeavor to Create New Virtue for the New Nation,” Virginia Review of Asian Studies 16 (2014): 11–26.

91. Benjamin Franklin, to George Whitefield, reprinted from The Evangelical Magazine, XI (1803): 27–28; also AL (fragment): American Philosophical Society. Philadelphia, July 6, 1749, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0156.

92. “From John Adams to Benjamin Rush, 22 December 1808,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5282.

93. Benjamin Franklin, “From the Morals of Confucius,” Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728–1789, vol. 4, 1737–1740, 74. Thanks to Mr. Roy Goodman, the former chief librarian of American Philosophic Society, for his help in providing with me the Pennsylvania Gazette.

94. Ibid., 82.

95. From Benjamin Franklin: “Speech in the Convention on the Constitution” (unpublished) [September 17, 1787].

96. “From Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Johnson, 23 August 1750,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0009. Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 4, July 1, 1750, through June 30, 1753 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 40–42.

97. Benjamin Franklin, Marginalia in a Pamphlet by Allan Ramsay, MS notations in the margins of a copy in the Library of Congress of [Allan Ramsay,] Thoughts on the Origin and Nature of Government, Occasioned by the Late Disputes between Great Britain and Her American Colonies: Written in the Year 1766 (London, 1769). Benjamin Franklin Papers, https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp.

98. See https://teachingamericanhistory.org/static/convention/delegates/franklin.html.

99. Louis J. Sirico Jr., How the Separation of Powers Doctrine Shaped the Executive, Working Paper Series, Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, 2008, 10.

100. Benjamin Franklin, to George Whitefield, [Before Sept. 2, 1769], reprinted from Joseph Belcher, George Whitefield: A Biography, with Special Reference to His Labors in America (New York: [1857] 2016), 414–15.

101. “From Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Cooper, 1 May 1777,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-24-02-0004. Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. William B. Willcox, vol. 24, May 1 through September 30, 1777 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), 6–7.

102. Skousen, Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, 359.

103. Benjamin Franklin to Madame Brillon, “The Ephemera,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-27-02-0408.

104. To Count Castiglione (unpublished), Philadelphia, October 14, 1787.

105. The Basis of the American Republic, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/government-1991/the-constitution-an-enduring-document/the-basis-of-the-american-republic.php.

106. American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/outlines/history-2005/the-formation-of-a-national-government/constitutional-convention.php.

107. Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 128–29.

108. See note 40.

109. Benjamin Franklin, to Sarah Bache (unpublished), Passy, Jany. 26th. 1784, Benjamin Franklin Papers, https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp.

110. Broadus Mitchell, Alexander Hamilton: The Revolutionary Years, Leaders of the American Revolution Series, ed. North Callahan (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970), 305.

111. Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Rights of Man, Jefferson and His Time Series, Volume II (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), 156.

112. Ibid.

113. Ellis, Founding Brothers, 9.

114. Roberts, Founding Mothers, 190.

115. Dumas Malone, Jefferson: The Virginian, Jefferson and His Time Series, Volume I (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), 251–52.

116. Richard R. Beeman, Perspectives on the Constitution: A Republic, If You Can Keep It, https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/historical-documents/perspectives-on-the-constitution-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it.

117. From Charles de Butr é with Franklin’s Draft of a Reply (unpublished) Tue, March 8, 1785, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp.

118. Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 446.

119. Benjamin Franklin, Convention Speech Proposing Prayers (unpublished), June 28, 1787, Benjamin Franklin Papers, https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp.

120. Reid, “Revolution as Taught by Confucianism,” 191.

121. Skousen, Compleated Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin, 356–57.

122. Benjamin Franklin, “Speech of June 4, 1787.”

123. James Madison, Federalist 84, 1788.

124. Benjamin Franklin, “Speech of June 4, 1787.”

125. Ibid.

126. Ibid.

127. Ibid.

128. Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia, 60.

129. Records of the Federal Convention, Article 2, Section 1, Clause 7, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_1_7s2.html.

130. Ibid.

131. The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 3, article 2, section 1, clause 7, doc. 2, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_1_7s2.html, University of Chicago Press, ed. Farrand, Max, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., 4 vols. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1937).

132. The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 3, article 2, section 1, clause 7, doc. 2, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a2_1_7s2.html, University of Chicago Press.

133. See http://www.benjamin-Franklin-history.org/constitutional-convention/.

134. George Taylor, James Wilson, Society of the Descendants of Signers of the Declaration of Independence, https://www.dsdi1776.com/signers-by-state/james-wilson/.

135. Stephen Macedo, “Meritocratic Democracy: Learning from the American Constitution,” in The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in Comparative Perspective, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Changyang Li (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 244.

136. James Madison, Federalist 51, 1788.

137. Noah Feldman, The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President (New York: Random House, 2017), 98–99, 121–122.

138. James Madison, “Federalist 10, [22 November] 1787,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-0178. Original source: The Papers of James Madison, ed. Robert A. Rutland, Charles F. Hobson, William M. E. Rachal, and Frederika J. Teute, vol. 10, 27 May 1787–3 March 1788 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 263–70.

139. Ibid.

140. “Federalist 68, [12 March 1788],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-04-02-0218. Original source: The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett, vol. 4, January 1787–May 1788 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 586–90.

141. Michael Kammen, ed., The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History (New York: Penguin, 1986), xv.

142. Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, 457.

143. Benjamin Franklin to the editor of the Federal Gazette (unpublished), 1788, Benjamin Franklin Papers, https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp.

144. Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, 450.

145. Ibid.

146. Ibid.

147. See https://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-constitution-amendments/fascinating-facts.

148. See https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1156/john-adams.

149. “From John Adams to Fran ç ois Adriaan Van der Kemp, October 1, 1817,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6807.

150. From John Adams to Benjamin Rush, December 22, 1808,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5282.

151. Adams, “Thoughts on Government.”

152. David McCullough, John Adams (New York and London: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 376.

153. Adams, “Thoughts on Government.”

154. Ibid.

155. “From John Adams to John Taylor, December 17, 1814,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6371.

156. James Madison, Federalist 10, 1787.

157. Jonathan Gross, ed., Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbooks: Poems of Nation, Family & Romantic Love, Collected by America’s Third President (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2006), 12.

158. Edward J. Larson, Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership (New York: William Morrow, 2020), 81.

159. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1743–1790, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffauto.asp.

160. Benjamin Rush, “Commonplace Book March 17, 1790,” in The Founders on the Founders: Word Portraits from the American Revolutionary Era, ed. John P. Kaminski (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2019), 297.

161. For a quick look at Thomas Jefferson’s constitutional legacy, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/a-quick-look-at-thomas-jeffersons-constitutional-legacy.

162. Wells, “Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbooks,” 626.

163. For the poem, please see ibid., 27.

164. Jefferson began the scrapbooks in 1801 and compiled them through his two terms as president.

165. Reid, “Revolution as Taught by Confucianism,” 194.

166. J. David Gowdy, Thomas Jefferson and the Pursuit of Virtue, http://www.liberty1.org/TJVirtue.pdf.

167. Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, Extracted Textually from the Gospels, Together with a Comparison of His Doctrines with Those of Others—The Jefferson Bible (St. Louis, MO: N. D. Thompson Publishing Co., 1902).

168. “Thomas Jefferson to Charles Thomson, January 9, 1816,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-09-02-0216. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. J. Jefferson Looney, vol. 9, September 1815 to April 1816 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 340–42.

169. Gross, Thomas Jefferson’s Scrapbooks, 12.

170. Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792.

171. Macedo, “Meritocratic Democracy,” 249.

172. Thomas Jefferson, “First Inaugural Address,” The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 33, February 17 to April 30, 1801 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 148–52, http://www.princeton.edu/~tjpapers/inaugural/infinal.html.

173. Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, 445.

174. Ibid., 492.

175. R. B. Bernstein, The Founding Fathers Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 26.

176. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1743–1790.

177. “From John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, 8 August 1807,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-5203.

178. Franklin, Convention Speech Proposing Prayers.

179. Bernstein, Founding Fathers Reconsidered, 32.

180. “From Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 10 December 1819,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-0953.

181. “From John Adams to Fran ç ois Adriaan Van der Kemp, 1 October 1817,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6807.

182. Ann Fishman, “The Greatest Naturist in the World,” Humanities: The Magazine of National Endowment of the Humanity, January/February 1995, 33; James E. Seely Jr., ed., Shaping North America: From Exploration to the American Revolution, 3 vols. (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2018), 92; Nina Reid, “Enlightenment and Piety in the Science of John Bartram,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 58, no. 2 (April 1991): 128.

183. Thomas Paine, “Age of Reason, 1794–1795,” in The Ideas that Made America: A Brief History, ed. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 58.

184. “From John Adams to Fran ç ois Adriaan Van der Kemp, 1 October 1817,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-6807.

185. Bernard Bailyn, “Political Experience and Enlightenment Ideas in Eighteenth-Century America,” in The Causes of the American Revolution, 3rd ed., ed. John. C. Wahlke (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1973), 95.

186. “From George Washington to Edmund Randolph, 8 January 1788,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-06-02-0013. Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, ed. W. W. Abbot, vol. 6, January 1, 1788–September 23, 1788 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997), 17–18.

187. See https://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-constitution-amendments/fascinating-facts/.

188. History of Civil Service Merit System of the United States and Selected Foreign Countries, together with Executive Reorganization Studies and Personnel Recommendations, compiled by the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, for the Subcommittee on Manpower and Civil Service of the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, House of Representatives 94th Congress, 2nd session, December 31, 1967 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1976), 4.

189. Edward Glaeser, “Public Ownership in the American City,” in Urban Issues and Public Finance: Essays in Honor of Dick Netzer, ed. Amy E. Schwartz (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2003), 130–62.

190. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, https://archive.opm.gov/about_opm/tr/history.asp.

191. See http://www.societyofthecincinnati.org/.

192. Stanley J. Idzerda, Roger E. Smith, and Linda J. Pike, eds., Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution—Selected Letters and Papers, 1776–1790: December 7, 1776–March 30, 1778 (Utica, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), v:209. For the concerns of Matthew Ridley (who wrote to John Adams at The Hague), John Adams (who fumed about the disregard of the Articles of Confederation), and John Jay, see Adams Papers, xv, 437, 468–69; Jay Papers, iii, 557, 559–60. See “From Benjamin Franklin to Sarah Bache, 26 January 1784,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-41-02-0327. Original source: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Ellen R. Cohn, vol. 41, September 16, 1783, through February 29, 1784 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 503–11.

193. Benjamin Franklin, To Sarah Bache (unpublished), Passy, January 26, 1784, http://franklinpapers.org.

194. Ibid.

195. Ibid.

196. Ibid.

197. Ibid.

198. Ibid.

199. Ichisada Miyazaki, China’s Examination Hell, trans. Conrad Schirokauer (New York: Weatherhill, 1976), 13–17.

200. Six Dynasties (also called Liuchao 六朝; 220–589) is a term for six Chinese dynasties. Immediately following the fall of the powerful Han dynasty in 220 AD, this era was one of disunity, instability, and warfare.

201. The system of recruiting public employees according to examinations was based on Confucian ideas. The oldest example of a merit-based civil service system was found in 200 BC. During the time, the Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD) established Confucianism as the basis of its political philosophy and structure. This system replaced administrative appointments based on the nobility of blood with those based solely on merit. Only an individual who passed the examination could be offered a public service position. Later, in the Sui dynasty (581–618 AD), the merit system was formally started and was fully developed during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The system continued to be used by all later dynasties throughout Chinese history until 1905, when the system was stopped by the imperial court.

202. Dave Wang, “Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Chinese Civilization,” Virginia Review of Asian Studies (2009), http://www.virginiareviewofasianstudies.com/.

203. By 1792 there were about 780 federal employees on the federal payroll. See History of Civil Service Merit System, 3. According to the Office of Personnel Management, as of December 2011, there were approximately 2.79 million civil servants employed by the U.S. government. As of 2014, there are 4,185,000 federal employees. Federal Employee Reports, https://www.opm.gov/.

204. The Development of Bureaucracy, http://www.ushistory.org/gov/8a.asp.

205. Ibid.

206. Kelle S. Sisung and Gerda-Ann Raffaelle, “The John Adams Administration,” in Presidential Administration Profiles for Students (Boston: Gale Group, 1999), 1, 3.

207. Katheryn Turner, “Republican Policy and the Judiciary Act of 1801,” William and Mary Quarterly 22 (January 1965): 5.

208. Kelle S. Sisung and Gerda-Ann Raffaelle, “The Thomas Jefferson Administration,” in Presidential Administration Profiles for Students (Boston: Gale Group, 1999), 3.

209. The Midnight Appointments, also called the Judiciary Act of 1801, was John Adams’s attempt to appoint Federalist supporters to the newly created court positions. The appointments were called the Midnight Appointments because they were completed in the last nineteen days of Adams’s presidency.

210. See http://www.encyclopedia.com/history/united-states-and-canada/us-history/spoils-system.

211. Sisung and Raffaelle, “The Thomas Jefferson Administration,” 3.

212. John Dickerson, “The Original Attack Dog: James Callender Spread Scurrilous Stories about Alexander Hamiltonand John Adams,” Slate, August 9, 2016

213. Jill Lepore, “Party Time,” The New Yorker, September 17, 2007, p. 94.

214. Michael Durey, Transatlantic Radicals and the Early America Republic (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1997).

215. Jefferson supported Callender financially. For example, Jefferson paid him $15.14 for Callender’s series of pamphlets History of the United States for 1796. See MB 2:963, 975, 980, 1002, 1005, 1018, 1028, and 1042, which covers the years 1797 to 1801 See James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson’s Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). See https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/james-callender and http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/richmond-recorder-publishes-report-of-presidential-concubine.

216. Lepore, “Party Time.”

217. Dumas Malone, Jefferson the President, First Term, 1801–1805, Jefferson and His Time Series, Volume IV (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 209, in a letter from James Callender to James Madison on April 27, 1801, after Jefferson failed to respond to a Callender letter of April 12, 1801.

218. Dictionary of American Biography, s.v. “Callender, James Thomson.”

219. Lepore, “Party Time.”

220. James Callender, “The President, Again,” The Recorder; or, Lady’s and Gentleman’s Miscellany, September 1, 1802.

221. Sally Hemings was a young slave girl who served Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha, at the Jefferson home, Monticello. When Jefferson was sent as an American diplomat to Paris in 1787, he took with him Polly, his youngest daughter, and Sally Hemings as a companion for Polly. Critics charge that while in Paris, Jefferson began a sexual relationship with Hemings. See http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=124.

222. John Rorrey Morse, Thomas Jefferson, American Statesmen Series (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898), 202.

223. James Truslow Adams, The Living Jefferson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 315.

224. See http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/32/messages/793.html.

225. Daniel W Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 334.

226. Leonard D. White, The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829–1961 (New York: ACLS History E-Book Project, 1954), 309–13. See also Murray N. Rothbard’s 1995 treatise, “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 11, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 308.

227. Gordon S. Wood, Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different (New York: Penguin, 2006), 116.

228. See http://watchingthewatchers.org/news/1221/corruption-cronies-and-19th-century.

229. Caleb J. McNulty (1816–1946), a clerk from Pennsylvania, member of the Ohio House of Representatives, 1841–1842. He was elected clerk of the United States House of Representatives for the 28th Congress and served until his dismissal on January 18, 1845 (December 6, 1843–January 18, 1845). See http://history.house.gov/People/Detail/38442.

230. Rothbard, “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” 3–75.

231. White, The Jacksonians, 309–13. See also Rothbard, “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” 3–75.

232. See http://lincolnmemory.blogspot.com/2009/04/lincoln-and-patronage.html.

233. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, vol. IV (New York: Century, 1890), 68–69.

234. Richard N. Current, ed., Sections and Politics: Selected Essays by William B. Hesseltine (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1968), 115.

235. Paul P. Van Riper, History of the United States Civil Service (Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson and Company, 1958), 43. Also see David H. Rosenbloom, Federal Service and the Constitution: The Development of the Public Employment Relationship (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014), 56. Also see Rothbard, “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” 3–75.

236. Ari Hoogenboom, “Thomas A. Jenkes and Civil Service Reform,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47, no. 4 (March 1961): 637.

237. Philip H. Burch, Jr., Elites in American History, vol. II, The Civil War to the New Deal (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981), 16, 23–24, 48, 54.

238. Ibid., 55.

239. The term carpetbaggers refers to Northerners who moved to the South after the Civil War, during Reconstruction. Scalawags were whiteSoutherners who cooperated politically with black freedmen and Northern newcomers. Scalawags typically supported the Republican Party. “Carpetbaggers and Scalawags,” Boundless U.S. History, November 20, 2016, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/.

240. William Marcy Tweed was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1853. Five years later, he became the head of Tammany Hall, the central organization of the Democratic Party in New York. In 1867, he was elected to the New York State Senate. The Tweed ring brought New York’s budget into their own pockets by embezzlement, bribery, and kickbacks.

241. Hoogenboom, “Thomas A. Jenckes and Civil Service Reform,” 643.

242. See http://592807.xobor.com/t7798f29-How-Bureaucrats-Captured-Government.html.

243. William S. McFeely and C. Vann Woodward, Responses of the Presidents to Charges of Misconduct (New York: Delacorte, 1974), 133–34; James McPherson, Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People (Boston: Cengage, 2012), 593.

244. The Grant administration was marked by widespread political corruption. It was said that it established a woeful record. Major scandals included the Credit Mobilier, the Whiskey Ring, and the Indian Ring.

245. In 1871, Curtis was appointed as the chair of the commission on civil service reform by President Ulysses S. Grant. From then until his death, he led this movement. In 1884, he refused to support James G. Blaine as candidate for the presidency and left the Republican Party to become an independent. See https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-William-Curtis.

246. Thomas Allen Jenckes was a U.S. congressional representative for the state of Rhode Island. He was an avid supporter of civil service reform.

247. Eaton was a lawyer. He played important role in American federal civil service reform. He was a member of the U.S. Civil Service Commission from 1873 to 1875. In 1877, he went to examine the experience of Great Britain’s adoption of the Chinese merit system. In 1880 he published Civil Service in Great Britain. He drafted the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, and later became a member of the new commission it established.

248. George W. Curtis, introduction to Civil Service in Great Britain: A History of Abuse and Reforms and Their Bearing Upon American Politics, by Dorman B. Eaton (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880), v.

249. Ibid.

250. Ibid.

251. Ibid.

252. Mr. Andrews, late Minister to Sweden, to Mr. Fish, Papers Related to the Foreign Relations of the United States, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1877/d310.

253. Ibid.

254. Thomas A. Jenckes, Speech of Hon. Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island, The Bill to Regulate the Civil Service of the United States and Promote the Efficiency Thereof: delivered in the House of Representatives, May 14, 1868 (Washington, DC: F&J Rives & Geo. A Bailey, Reporters and Printers of the Debates of Congress, 1868), 5.

255. Dorman B. Eaton, Civil Service in Great Britain: A History of Abuse and Reforms and Their Bearing Upon American Politics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880), 334–35.

256. “John Stuart Mill, Letter 1402 to an Unidentified Correspondent,” in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. J. M. Roberson, vol. XVII (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 1572, 73.

257. Ibid.

258. Rea T. Markin, “Rights of the Public Employee under the Illinois Civil Service System: A Progression of the Law,” John Marshall Law Review 8, no. 1 (1974): 53, http://repository.jmls.edu/lawreview/vol8/iss1/3.

259. Hoogenboom, “Thomas A. Jenckes and Civil Service Reform,” 641.

260. The Nation was a New York periodical founded by young British journalist Edwin Lawrence Godkin, a supporter of the civil service reform.

261. Nation IV, April 11, 1867, 286.

262. Rothbard, “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” 3–75.

263. Jed Shugerman, The Founding of the DOJ and the Failure of Civil Service Reform, 1865–1870, 6, http://www.americanbarfoundation.org/uploads/cmd/documents/shugerman_doj_and_civil_service.doc.

264. Hoogenboom, “Thomas A. Jenckes and Civil Service Reform,” 647.

265. Shugerman, Founding of the DOJ, 6.

266. A Bill to Regulate the Civil Service of the United States, and Promote the Efficiency Thereof, Senate No. 430, 39 Cong., I Sess., forms the basis for the ensuing discussion of the Jenckes bill. This bill was introduced by Henry B. Anthony of Rhode Island, Jenckes’s friend. The bill is identical with Jenckes’s bill.

267. Ari Hoogenboom, “Pennsylvania in the Civil Service Reform Movement,” Pennsylvania History 28, no. 3 (July 1961): 268.

268. Jenckes, Speech of Hon. Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island, 8.

269. Ibid.

270. Thomas A. Jenckes, The Civil Service: Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1868), 13.

271. Hoogenboom, “Thomas A. Jenkes and Civil Service Reform,” 636.

272. Jenckes, Speech of Hon. Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island, 5.

273. Cong. Globe, 39 Cong., 2 sess., 1034 (February 6, 1867).

274. Jenckes, The Civil Service: Report, 124.

275. The Five Classics (五经 wujing) and Four Books (四书 si shu) collectively create the foundation of Confucianism. The Five Classics and Four Books were the basis of the civil examination in imperial China and can be considered the Confucian canon. The Five Classics consists of the 诗经 Book of Odes, 史记 Book ofDocuments, 易经 Book of Changes, 礼记 Book of Rites, and 春秋 the Spring and Autumn Annals. The Four Books are comprised of 中庸 the Doctrine of the Mean, 大学 the Great Learning, 孟子 Mencius, and 论语 the Analects.

276. Jencks, The Civil Service: Report, 126.

277. Ibid., 125.

278. Ibid., 131.

279. Ibid., 134.

280. Ibid.

281. Ibid.

282. Argus Panoptes (or Argos) is a many-eyed giant in Greek mythology. It is known for having spawned the saying “the eyes of Argus,” as in to be “followed by,” “trailed by,” “watched by,” among others, the eyes; the saying is used to describe being subject to strict scrutiny in one’s actions to an invasive, distressing degree.

283. The Ear of Dionysius (Italian: Orecchio di Dionisio) is a limestone cave carved out of the Temenites hill in the city of Syracuse, on the island of Sicily in Italy. The term Ear of Dionysius is used to refer to surveillance, specifically that for political gain.

284. Jencks, The Civil Service: Report, 131.

285. Ibid.

286. Jencks, The Civil Service: Report, 125.

287. Hoogenboom, “Thomas A. Jenkes and Civil Service Reform,” 642.

288. Ibid.

289. Jenckes, Speech of Hon. Thomas A. Jenckes of Rhode Island, 11.

290. Ibid.

291. Ibid.

292. Ibid.

293. Ibid.

294. Ibid.

295. Ibid., 15.

296. Cong. Globe, 39 Cong. 2d Sess. 837-41 (January 29, 1867).

297. Ibid.

298. Jenckes had the support of forty-seven Republicans and twenty-two Democrats, but was opposed by fifty-six Republicans and eleven Democrats. See Cong. Globe, 39 Cong., 2d Sess., 1036 (February 6, 1867).

299. Cong. Globe, 39 Cong., 2d Sess., 1036 (February 6, 1867).

300. Gale to Jenckes, November 25, 1868, Jenckes Papers.

301. Rothbard, “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” 3–75.

302. When the Chinese Embassy visited Boston in the summer of 1868 a banquet was given them at the St. James Hotel, on August 21. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) made a speech at the banquet. “Speech at Banquet in Honor of Chinese Embassy Boston, 1868,” in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), Vol. XI. Miscellanies XXVI.

303. Rothbard, “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” 3–75.

304. Ibid.

305. Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 3d Sess., 378 (January 9, 1871).

306. History of Civil Service Merit System, 4.

307. See http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29520.

308. See http://biography.yourdictionary.com/dorman-bridgman-eaton.

309. Ibid., 4.

310. Ibid., 354–55.

311. Curtis, introduction to Civil Service in Great Britain, iii.

312. Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1927).

313. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act (ch. 27, 22 Stat. 403) is a U.S. federal law, enacted in 1883, that established that positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political affiliation: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=1098.

314. See http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/POLSC2313.3.1.pdf.

315. In 1883, with the passage of the Pendleton Act, some 13,900 employees, about 10.5 percent of the federal civilian employees, were initially placed in the classified service and subject to the merit principles. By the mid-1970s, more than 90 percent of federal civilian employees were under the merit system. See History of Civil Service Merit System, 3.

316. Eaton, Civil Service in Great Britain, 438.

317. Ibid., vi.

318. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 67.

319. Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. Civil Service Commissioner, in a letter dated February 8, 1895.

320. Jenckes, The Civil Service: Report, 124.

321. James Carpenter, “Thomas Jefferson and the Ideology of Democratic Schooling,” Democracy & Education 21, no. 2 (2013): 1.

322. Johann Neem, “Is Jefferson a Founding Father of Democratic Education?” Democracy & Education 22, no. 2 (2013): 1.

323. The Spring and Autumn period (春秋时代) was from approximately 771 to 476 BC. The period’s name derives from the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of Chinese history between 722 and 479 BC, which tradition associates with Confucius.

324. Friedrich Max Müller, The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 28, part 4 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885), 82.

325. Morals of Confucius, 47.

326. 知者不惑，仁者不忧，勇者不惧。 (Confucian Analects, trans. James Legge, 1893, chapter 19).

327. Morals of Confucius, 57.

328. Confucius taught, “This is what Confucius propos’ d to the Princes, to instruct them how to rectify and polish first their own reason…. His person being thus perfected, his family, forming itself according to this Model, will be reform’d and amended. His Family being arriv’d at this Perfection,’twill severs as an Example to all Subjects of the particular Kingdom, and the Members of the particular Kingdom to those that compose the Body of the Empire.” Morals of Confucius, 36–37.

329. The Classic of Poetry, also Shijing, translated variously as the Book of Songs, Book of Odes, or simply known as the Odes or Poetry (詩) is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works dating from the eleventh to seventh centuries BC. It is one of the “Five Classics “compiled by Confucius.

330. The Zhou dynasty (周朝) was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. The Zhou dynasty was the longest dynasty in Chinese history.

331. Marsha Elaine Covington, “Great Teachers on Teaching Adults: Comparison of Philosophy and Practice from Antiquity to the Present” (doctor of education thesis, Montana State University, 1997).

332. Colin Power, The Power of Education: Education for All, Development, Globalisation and UNESCO, Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects Series (New York: Springer, 2014), 185.

333. Michael Kazin, Rebecca Edwards, and Adam Rothman, The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 142. One of the oldest examples of a merit-based civil service system existed in the imperial bureaucracy of China. Chung Tan and Yinzheng Geng, India and China: Twenty Centuries of Civilization Interaction and Vibrations (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 128. China produced not only the world’s first “bureaucracy” but also the world’s first “meritocracy.” Melvin Konner, Unsettled: Anthropology of the Jews (New York: Viking Compass, 2003), 217. China is the world’s oldest meritocracy.

334. Thomas J. Sienkewicz, Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (Hackensack, NJ: Salem Press, 2003), 434.

335. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 51.

336. Ibid.

337. Kazin, Edwards, and Rothman, Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, 142.

338. Schwarz, Expansion of England, 229.

339. Charlene Tan, “Confucianism and Education: Curriculum and Pedagogy, Educational Theories and Philosophies,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias, November 2017, http://education.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-226.

340. “The Mather School is Marking 375 years of Public Education; NYPD’s Bratton, an Alumnus, to Speak at Assembly,” Dorchester Reporter, https://www.dotnews.com/2014/mather-school-marking-375-years-public-education-nypd-s-bratton-alumnu.

341. Louis B. Wright, The Cultural Life of the American Colonies, 1607–1673, New American Series, ed. Henry Steele Commager and Richard B. Morris (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 100.

342. Kevin R. G. Gutzman, Thomas Jefferson—Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America (New York: St. Martin’s, 2017), 198.

343. Linda L. Arthur, “A New Look at Schooling and Literacy: The Colony of Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 84, no. 4 (2000): 563–88.

344. Wise, History of Education, 346.

345. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814.

346. Ibid.

347. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

348. Benjamin Justice, “A Window to the Past: What an Easy Contest Reveals about Early American Education,” American Educator (Summer 2015): 33.

349. Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1974), 151.

350. James Carpenter, “The Complexity of Thomas Jefferson: A Response to ‘The Diffusion of Light’: Jefferson’s Philosophy of Education,” Democracy & Education 22, no. 1 (2014).

351. Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power (New York: Random House, 2012), 324.

352. Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, chap. 18, doc. 16, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s16.html, University of Chicago Press, ed. William Peden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1954).

353. G. C. Lee, ed., Crusade against Ignorance: Thomas Jefferson on Education, 5th ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1967), 118.

354. Thomas Jefferson, copied into his Commonplace Book.

355. Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, September 7, 1814, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0462.

356. Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.

357. Thomas Jefferson, to George Washington, Paris January 4, 1785, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-09-02-0135.

358. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia with RelatedDocuments, ed. David Waldstreicher (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002), 182–85.

359. Jeff Sparagana, The Educational Theory of Thomas Jefferson, http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Jefferson.html.

360. “Thomas Jefferson, from Thomas Jefferson to Mann Page, 30 August 1795,” Founders Online, National Archives, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-28-02-0347. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. John Catanzariti, vol. 28, January 1, 1794–February 29, 1796 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 440–41.

361. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 182.

362. “Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813,” The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, chap. 15, doc. 61, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s61.html, University of Chicago Press, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1959).

363. A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, 18 June 1779,” Founders Online, National Archives, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-02-02-0132-0004-0079. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 2, 1777–June 18, 1779 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 526–35.

364. “Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography,” in The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, chap. 15, doc. 20, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s20.html, University of Chicago Press, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, collected and edited by Paul Leicester Ford, Federal Edition, 12 vols. (New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904–1905).

365. Dustin Hornbeck, “Seeking Civic Virtue: Two Views of the Philosophy and History of Federalism in U.S. Education,” Journal of Thought (Fall–Winter 2017): 62.

366. National Park Service, Thomas Jefferson’s Plan for the University of Virginia: Lessons from the Lawn, “Reading 1: Education as the Keystone to the New Democracy,” https://www.nps.gov/articles/thomas-jefferson-s-plan-for-the-university-of-virginia-lessons-from-the-lawn-teaching-with-historic-places.htm.

367. Willard Sterne Randall, Thomas Jefferson: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 288.

368. William K. Medlin, The History of Educational Ideas in the West (New York: Center for Applied Research in Education, 1964), 108.

369. “Thomas Jefferson to John Banister, Jr., 15 October 1785,” Founders Online, National Archives, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-08-02-0499. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 8, 25 February–31 October 1785 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 635–38.

370. Robert A. Gross, An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790–1840, History of the Book in America Series, vol 2, ed. Mary Kelley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 250.

371. D. H. Myer, “The Uniqueness of the American Enlightenment,” American Quarterly 28, no. 2 (Summer 1976): 23.

372. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York: Random House, 1958), 109–10.

373. From Thomas Jefferson to John Banister Jr., October 15, 1785, Founders Online, National Archives, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-08-02-0499. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 8, February 25–October 31, 1785 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 635–38.

374. Ibid.

375. Myer, “The Uniqueness of the American Enlightenment,” 173.

376. Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to Present (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 408.

377. “To Thomas Jefferson from William Jarvis, 18 February 1809,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-9828.

378. “Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813,” The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, chap. 15, doc.61, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s61.html, University of Chicago Press, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia), 1959.

379. Herrlee Glessner Creel, Confucius: The Man and the Myth (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951), 5.

380. Ibid., 98.

381. Catalogue of the library of Thomas Jefferson, https://www.loc.gov/item/52060000/.

382. “Charles J. Ingersoll to Thomas Jefferson, 4 July 1818,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-13-02-0127. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. J. Jefferson Looney, vol. 13, April 22, 1818 to January 31, 1819 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 124.

383. Ibid.

384. “Thomas Jefferson to Charles J. Ingersoll, 20 July 1818,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-13-02-0155. Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. J. Jefferson Looney, vol. 13, April 22, 1818 to January 31, 1819 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 142.

385. “Report on Books for Congress, [23 January] 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-06-02-0031. Original source: The Papers of James Madison, ed. William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal, vol. 6, January 1, 1783–April 30, 1783 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969, 62–115.

386. “Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813,” The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, chap. 15, doc. 61, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s61.html, University of Chicago Press, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, ed. Lester J. Cappon, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia), 1959.

387. Ibid.

388. Derk Bodde, “Chinese Ideas in the West,” in China: A Teaching Workbook, Asia for Educators, Columbia University, http://www.learn.columbia.edu/nanxuntu/html/state/ideas.pdf.

389. 孟子, 盡心章句下（十四） 孟子曰：民為貴，社稷次之，君為 輕。 Mencius said, “The people are the most prized, the gods of land and cereals come next, and the sovereign is the lightest. Therefore, he who wins the heart of the people may become a king; who wins the heart of the king may become a state ruler; he who wins the heart of the state ruler may be appointed a high-ranking official. 吴国珍，孟子 · 大学 · 中庸 · 平解 · 英译， 471.

390. Creel, Confucius: The Man and the Myth, 98.

391. Edward L. Shaughnessy, Confucius and the University of Chicago: Of Myths and Men, June 2010, http://cccp.uchicago.edu/downloads/Confucius_and_the_University_of_Chicago.pdf.

392. Douglas L. Wilson and Lucia Stanton, eds., Jefferson Abroad (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 27. Jefferson bought the 1732 French edition. The book was written in Spanish by Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (June 26, 1600–October 1, 1659), a Spanish politician, administrator, and Catholic clergyman in seventeenth-century Spain and vice regal Mexico. His Historia de la conquista de la China por el Tartaro (History of the Conquest of China by the Tartars) reported on the conquest of the Ming China by the Manchus, based on reports that reached Mexico by the way of the Philippines. The work was first published in Spanish in Paris in 1670; a French translation appeared the same year. An English translation, whose full title was The History of the Conquest of China by the Tartars together with an Account of Several Remarkable things, Concerning the Religion, Manners, and Customs of Both Nation’s, but especially the Latter, appeared in London in 1676. Palafox’s work, based on hearsay, was generally less informed than De bello tartarico, an eyewitness account by the Chinese-speaking Jesuit Martino Martini.

393. Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, The history of the conquest of China by the Tartars together with an account of several remarkable things concerning the religion, manners, and customs of both nations, but especially the latter 1600–1659, 482. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A54677.0001.001/1:4?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.

394. Ibid, 503–4.

395. Perry L. Glanzer, “The Dissenting Tradition in American Education,” American Educational History Journal 35, no. 2 (2008), 393.

396. Richard Hofstadter, About the Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage, 1962), 27.

397. Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in The Founders’ Constitution, vol. 1, chap. 15, doc. 20, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s20. html, University of Chicago Press, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, collected and edited by Paul Leicester Ford, Federal Edition, 12 vols. (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904–1905).

398. Hornbeck, “Seeking Civic Virtue,” 62.

399. Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 545.

400. Wise, History of Education, 350.