scholarly journals Introduction: The New England Town Meeting: A Founding Myth of American Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Paula Cossart ◽  
Andrea Felicetti ◽  
James Kloppenberg
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
Founding Myth

The Commission Plan of City Government

1911 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-56
Author(s):  
Oswald Ryan
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Municipal Government ◽  
City Government ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
State Governments ◽  
The People ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
New Period ◽  
Widespread Belief

To appreciate the real significance in municipal affairs of the lately inaugurated movement toward city government by commission some knowledge of the general trend of American municipal development is necessary; for it is as a phase of a general tendency and not as an isolated experiment that the movement is to be properly regarded. Like most of our institutions, our city government, both in form and substance, was transplanted from England to the colonies, where it underwent the usual differentiation under the influence of changed conditions. This differentiation, however, did not proceed to any marked degree during the colonial period, and at the beginning of the national era the general form of municipal government, with the exception of the New England town-meeting system, was that of the English borough. Then began a new period, during which the influence of the federal and state governments dominated the organic development of the municipalities. That the “federal analogy” should have thus become the controlling factor in this development was due partly to a widespread belief in the efficacy of the governmental principles which it involved, and partly to a misconception of the functions of the municipality. A cardinal feature of the federal plan was Montesquieu's principle of the separation of powers, having for its object to safeguard the interests of the people against the arbitrary and ill-advised acts of public officers.

From Neighborhood to Nation: The Democratic Foundations of Civil Society. By Kenneth Thomson. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001. 195p. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-836
Author(s):  
Richard M. Flanagan
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New England ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Federal Funds ◽  
Service Programs ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
The Town

It was New York Governor Al Smith's famous dictum that the ills of democracy could be solved with more democracy. Many agree with him some 75 years later. The shelves of political science overflow with books lamenting the decline of intermediary institutions that once plugged the hearts and minds of citizens into government and civic life. Democracy scaled down to the town and neighborhood allows people to address problems that are experienced in the routine of everyday life. Stripped of abstraction, politics loses its mystery and the sense of alienation that accompanies it. But Americans no longer gather at the political club, the town meeting, the church, and the union hall. Citizens are plugged into television, the family, or perhaps the job, interested in private concerns. In response, pundits, professors, and politicians call for a revival of local political and civic life. President George W. Bush's “Faith-Based Initiative,” which would use federal funds to support church social service programs, can be viewed as a response to the national mood of a people adrift. While many have forwarded tiresome critiques of what ails us, Kenneth Thomson does the nitty-gritty empirical work that should mark social science's unique contribution to this debate.

Large Town Officeholding in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut: The Growth of Oligarchy

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce C. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local History ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
Local Study ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Large Town ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial New England

The Colonial New England town has always intrigued American historians but, paradoxically, few historians until recently have placed the colonial town under a microscope and studied it in detail. Most, instead, like George Bancroft and Herbert Baxter Adams, simply heaped accolades upon it. Even the Progressive historians, writing in an age of scientific history and seeking to debunk the myth of town meeting democracy, still did not apply a close scrutiny to the actual sources but instead also talked in generalities. The only real exceptions to this pattern and the only persons to delve deeply into local sources were Charles Andrews in his River Towns of Connecticut and G. E. Howard in his Introduction to the Local Constitutional History of the United States, both published in 1889. The next serious professional local study did not appear until 1961. In the intervening seventy-two years hundreds of local histories were written, but by antiquarians who frequently wrote with intelligence and felicity but seldom asked the significant questions that a professional historian would. Indeed, to be involved in local history implied, to people living in this time period, that a person was an antiquarian and not a true historian. However, since 1961 a number of historians have attempted to put the New England town under a microscope and ascertain some specifics to replace the generalities.

Southern Literature

PMLA ◽  
1892 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Wm. M. Baskervill
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New England ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Southern Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Town Meeting ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Town ◽  
Town Meetings

Civilization in the United States has been diffused from two centres—New England and Virginia. In the former the starting-point was the town-meeting; in the latter, the planter's mansion. As has been well said, the germ of the whole difference between them lay in their different notions concerning the value of vicinity among the units of society. From the town-meetings of New England have come schools, manufactures and a literature; from the planters’ mansions of the Old Dominion generals, statesmen and liberty. One of the most philosophic political judgments of recent times, says Nichol—the anti-Southern historian of American literature, admits that “the honour of maintaining self-government, and making it possible for the Federation to dominate over the continent cannot be wrested from the Southern States.” The spirit of liberty, Bancroft tells us, had planted itself deep among the Virginians and elsewhere he adds, “an instinctive aversion to too much government has always been a trait of Southern character.”

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