Introduction
Utopian literature captures people’s imagination and hopes for a better world. Traditionally, utopian literature is defined as an “imaginary literature which depicts an ideal and therefore nonexistent society.” The human aspirations enshrined in 17th Century utopian literature was no exception, inspiring the discourse underpinning the American Enlightenment while propelling the Founding Fathers to seek an optimum balance between the government and its citizens. John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) served as an indispensable aspect of the American canon, with the rival reactions to it by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams highlighting the clash in their vision of what America would stand for. Revolving around this monumental work, the exhibit contains five artifacts—Jefferson’s commonplace book, John Adams’ letter to Abigail Adams, John Martin’s Paradise Lost mezzotint, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” and a special version of Paradise Lost co-signed by Jefferson and Madison.
Although Jefferson and Adams both appreciated Milton’s literary techniques, they read Paradise Lost in different lights. Jefferson and Adams’ diverging reactions to the archetype of Satan also foreshadowed their political rivalry, and it wasn’t until Thomas Paine who utilized quotes and insights from Paradise Lost that the seemingly unreconcilable divide would merge—a politically moderate deist approach that acted as a bridge between early Federalists and Republicans.
The Founding Fathers’ reactions to Paradise Lost
Both Jefferson and Adams admired the ingenuity of Milton’s literary techniques. Jefferson, in a letter to Robert Skipwith in 1771, included Milton's Paradise Lost in a list of "books that I think indispensable to give a person just views of the moral system of the universe." James Madison, another Founding Father, shared Jefferson’s almost fanatical admiration for Paradise Lost. A special edition of Paradise Lost co-signed by both Jefferson and Madison illustrates the fact that the two men read and handled the same copy of Paradise Lost, demonstrating their intellectual exchanges regarding favorite literary works. It is the only copy in the world to contain both of their signatures on the same page, and Madison’s signature appeared on five spots—four on the reverse sides and one below the title.
Similarly, John Adams read Paradise Lost during early adulthood and wrote in his personal diary on 30 April, 1756, that “I can only gaze at him [Milton] with astonishment, without comprehending the vast Compass of his Capacity.” Even Adams’ family expressed their admiration for Milton in their letters of exchange. Written on 15 March, 1819, Louisa Adams’ letter to Charles Adams characterized Paradise Lost as a book that, while “very difficult would excite your admiration.”
Aside from her remarks on Paradise Lost, Louisa Adams also suggests a belief in the maturity and growth that can come from grappling with complex and challenging literature. In the letter, she encourages Charles Adams to broaden his literary horizon and not to limit himself to works that are easy or immediately comprehensible, mirroring the key themes of continual learning and intellectual exploration in the American Enlightenment. This is a time period in which intellectuals read voraciously on literary works like Paradise Lost and reacted enthusiastically through letters or personal accounts.
Despite their consensus on Milton’s pioneering literature, America’s Founding Fathers reacted to Paradise Lost in fundamentally different ways that eventually led up to their political rivalry after the American Revolution. Specifically, it was their opposing response to the archetype of “Satan” which foreshadowed the later divide. Jefferson idolized Satan’s rebellion and celebrated it through his collections of quotes from Paradise Lost, the majority of which derived from Satan’s speeches. Jefferson copied the following passage from Paradise Lost into his commonplace book:
What thou the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
Jefferson kept this passage in his quote collections and alluded to it throughout his subsequent life. For example, Jefferson wrote to his close friend Peter Carr on August 18, 1785, “I am much mortified to hear that you have lost so much time…however, the way to repair the loss is to improve the future time.” The main ideas reflected in this letter reflects the line “all is not lost; the unconquerable will” in Jefferson’s Paradise Lost quote collections.
On the other hand, Adams rejected Satan on the grounds of morality despite their shared fear of tyranny. Many scholars interpreted Adams’ “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” as a thorough challenge to “big governments.” This view is not totally accurate. What Adams instead desired was a republic in which “an empire of laws and not of men” existed, a phrase he took from James Harrington’s groundbreaking Oceana. Adams also did not want extreme liberty—for him, the notion of an anti-God rebellion was far too radical. What he wanted instead was for the government to circumvent the people’s liberty so that they will not descend into a state of chaos and a total lack of religious piety. Within a week of his remarks on the ingenuity of Paradise Lost, Adams copied Addison’s “Criticism on Milton” into his commonplace book, a clear reflection of his dissent against the idea of an anti-God revolt.
Adams’ dissent to radical freedom could be traced in popular paintings at the time as well. John Martin’s 1846 mezzotint depicted Adam and Eve as they descend from the utopian “Garden of Eve” above to the world below. The painting contains a small yet sublime stream of light from above, demonstrating the superiority of God and the ephemeral nature of the utopian world. It implicitly frames heaven as the only true utopian, unveiling the destiny of Adam and Eve—which serves as a reminder of the repercussions of radical liberty and religious irreverence.
Reflections on Early America’s Domestic Political Sphere
The two Founding Fathers’ reactions to Satan is a stark representation of their political stance. Not surprisingly, Jefferson and Adams made very opposite, polarizing remarks regarding the French Revolution. In a letter to Abigail, Adams wrote that “Sin and Death seem to have departed the Place where Milton saw them and taken their abode in Paris,” alluding to Paradise Lost to characterize the French Revolution as a chaotic failure. Jefferson, on the other hand, was an avid supporter of the French Revolution. He agreed with the French revolutionaries’ visions for a utopian society celebrating pseudo-anarchy and radical freedom. In a letter to William Short, Jefferson asserted in a formal and subtly indignant tone that early American government had to support the French Revolution despite the sacrifices of the innocent, “the liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of this contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?” To Jefferson, sacrifices were necessary since the revolution wheels on liberty as its end goal. This longing for radical liberty contradicts classical rationalist principles that Adams firmly upheld, shaping the two Founding Fathers’ diverging reactions to the French Revolution.
Early America’s domestic political affairs further reflected the two Founding Fathers’ differing reactions to Milton’s Paradise Lost, as Jefferson and Adams would also become the largest political rivals. In a letter to Jefferson on 15 November, 1813, Adams wrote, “I once proposed to you to unite in endeavours to obtain an Amendment of the constitution, prohibiting to the seperate States, the Power of creating Banks; but giving Congress Authority to establish one Bank, with a branch in each State…But you Spurned the Proposition from you with disdain.” This testifies to Adams’ political stance as a federalist—he called for the emergence of a strong, centralized federal government as opposed to the de-centralized state governments Jefferson favored. This is rooted in Adams’ distrust in radical freedom, as seen in his reactions toward the archetype of Satan in Paradise Lost. For example, Adams presented his vision of an internal market with national roads, canals, universities, and other infrastructure initiatives considered as “public goods.” This proposal was then met with fierce opposition as his political enemies pointed out that Adams’ policy proposals empower the central government to the extent where it could interfere with and even disrupt regional affairs. Adams, nevertheless, advanced the central government’s power during his presidency. He ordered the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal as well as connecting the Ohio River System to the Great Lakes, hiring military engineers for survey and construction operations in the process. Adams’ achievements were very phenomenal because it was the first time an American president concentrated national resourcesto produce public goods. His precedents set an example of an empowered federal government that projected its political agenda over state administrations and became involved in regional affairs.
Jefferson’s domestic policies steered in the opposite direction, clashing against Adams’ federalist political stance. Jefferson, a firm Republican, wanted the government to refrain from interfering in the people’s affairs. He thought the country ought to cut down on Hamilton’s standing army and therefore reduced army expenditures—cutting down the size of both the land infantry and the Navy. This was matched by Jefferson’s fiscal and economic policies that repealed taxes and implemented austerity measures to pay off public debts. Even more so, to uphold America as the “asylum” for “oppressed humanity,” Jefferson convinced the Congress to reduce citizenship residency requirements from 14 to 5 years, directly countering Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts which restricted foreign-born Americans and limited free speech. Jefferson’s federalism reflected his beliefs in each state’s rights to handle regional affairs and the limited role of the federal government.
Thomas Paine’s Reconciliatory Approach
Early America went through an ultra-religious period known as the First Great Awakening— beginning in the 1730s and lasting to about 1740—in which a massive number of Americans adopted Christianity following waves of public sermons. Amidst the context of religious revival, the American Revolution ascended as the Founding Fathers’ political writings ignited the public’s collective consensus to fight for independence. Most notable of those works is Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” since it posed a direct challenge to King George III’s power and legitimacy. Interestingly, Paine’s reactions to and use of Paradise Lost offered a deist approach that blended Jefferson’s and Adams’ reactions to the archetype of Satan.
In his politically inflammatory pamphlet “Common Sense,” Paine quoted a passage from Book IV of Paradise Lost: “for never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.” This quote is taken from Satan’s monologue on the inevitability of conflict against God, and Paine deployed the quote in the context of an intensifying struggle between the colonists and King George III—colonists were angry for not only had Britain failed to protect the colonists but also dispatched mercenaries against them in fear of the rising claim for independence. Through his colloquial essay collection, Paine denied the possibility of reconciliation welcomed by many colonists at the time and encouraged a thorough military revolution modeled after Satan’s in Paradise Lost. Connected to this idea is the colonists’ challenge of the king’s divine sovereignty. Whereas earlier, the king justified his power through God-given sovereignty, Paine ruthlessly challenged this concept in “Common Sense” by pointing out that the Bible does not endorse the idea of hereditary monarchy. The notion that human kings do not carry divine power grows in popularity following Paine’s critique. At the same time, Paine does not reject a powerful central government altogether; he argued for a “continental constitution” in his work “Public Good” and called a national convention to establish a stronger federal government through strengthening the efficacy of the Articles of Confederation. Unlike Jefferson, Paine thought that states ought to unite under times of national crises. Unlike Adams, Paine thought that states should still hold enough power to check and balance the federal government and prevent the type of concentrated power that leads to monarchy. Paine’s political approach, in essence, mediated the divide between Jefferson’s Republicanism and Adams’ Federalism.
Interestingly as well, Paine formed a subtle parallel between the American colonists to “Satan,” the archenemy of God, by alluding to Satan’s revolution in Paradise Lost. This parallel suggests an implicit defiance of God because it characterizes God as the ruthless dictator towering above His subjects. Nevertheless, Paine did not reject God’s divinity because he still used divine justifications of human rights to support his argument. For example, Paine’s overall argument is structured on an appeal to natural rights, which he viewed as inherent and given by God to all humans. He made the case that a government's legitimacy comes from its ability to secure the well-being of the people and respect these God-given rights. By that metric, he argued, the British rule over the American colonies was wholly illegitimate, and these God-given rights thus provided the ethical grounding for Paine’s advocacy of independence.
The parallel between the colonists and the archetype of “Satan” mirrored early deist beliefs gaining prominence at the time, a deviation from traditional forms of Christian orthodoxy. This belief system revolved around the notion that God was the single creator of the universe and does not intervene in human affairs that occur due to natural laws. The strong belief in deism is also the reason Paine embodied a rejection of organized religions and a belief in human rationality. From the Constitution, we learn that the early American government operated around a blueprint that rejected the concept of a “secular state” yet at the same time pre-empted the emergence of an ultra religious society seen in the age of the Puritans, allowing for progress and religion to co-exist. Indeed, the Constitution’s concepts of rights and “all men are born equal” still stemmed from God’s creation and divinity, but at the same time, it allowed for religious freedom and increased liberty. Paine’s deist approach resolved the religious tension underlying Jefferson and Adams’ rival reactions to Paradise Lost and helped early America preserve both its innate religious dynamism and its people’s aspirations for liberty.
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