Sentimental Democracy

Sentiment and Sympathy: Beginnings

Though little remembered, the 1770 novel The Man of Feeling provides a glimpse of how America’s self-image evolved. It illustrates that an enlightened society can use positive passion and sympathetic imagination to advance justice and cure its ills. Today, people in the U.S. point to the Constitution and the rule of law as centerpieces of their love of liberty. But the culture of "sensibility" still is important. The emotional history of the United States from 1750 to 1828 illuminates a period during which Americans fell in love with the idea of America.

Almost any attempt to define America’s identity traces to the Revolutionary War and its rhetoric. The dominant emotional forces at that time were sentiment and sympathy. People feared temptation and "base" passions. They sought to balance rationality and sentiment, believing reason would guide sentiment to good judgments.

People were expected to demonstrate their sensibility and, most important, to be sympathetic to others. Leaders brought that depth of feeling to public life. In a philosophy that unfolded over the decades, sensibility was the key to moderate, moral behavior...