"Democracy meant to him (Tocqueville) the leveling of all distinctions among men, the end of aristocracy and special privileges....
"As he noted--and he was very well versed in the 1774-1800 period, as well as more recent times--the Federalists had been an aristocratic party, but after helping institute the Constitution, they had disappeared as a political force..."
One aspect that he seems to miss here is that the Democrats, Jefferson's Democrats, were all, also, so called American Aristocrats.
By that, I mean, and Wood means, I think, that they were of a higher class than common citizens. He says so in his Introduction to Revolutionary Characters.
They were closer to what one would have characterized as the lower gentry in Britain, but not really even that high, in my judgment, so to speak.
They were not really tantamount to the lower British aristocracy.
They were frankly not really European aristocrats, but some new lower hybrid of them.
I don't call either of them, Democrats or Federalists, that, myself.
Gordon Wood certainly calls them both gentlemen, discusses how the concept of aristocrat was in a state of flux at least in Britain especially, and seems to believe that the term aristocrat might be usefully applied to both.
Jefferson certainly considered himself every bit as much a gentleman, though not an ancien regime aristocrat, as Hamilton, any of the other Federalists, or any other American.
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