"Democracy" and "Republic" as Understood in Late Eighteenth-Century America

JoHN ADAMS was bothered in 1788 by peculiar sense in which words republic, commonwealth [or] popular state [were] used by... writers who mean by them democracy.' He and others who complained about confused usage of democracy and republic had ample grounds for doing so, because terms were used in variety of ways. Often, for example, they were used synonymously, as by various extremist political groups in I790s; fourteen such organizations called themselves Republican Societies, fifteen were known as Democratic Societies, and for good measure there were two Democratic-Republican Societies.2 Yet an author of United States Constitution, George Mason, must have had different understanding when he declared: Some people have called [Holland's] government democracy; others have called it an aristocracy. It is well known to be republic.3 But another author of Constitution, James Wilson, simply defined a republican or democratic government as one in which the people at large retain supreme power.4 In contrast, newspaper published in Baltimore from I80Z to 1804 was entitled The Republican; or, Anti-Democrat. The question of meaning, no matter how confusing, cannot be simply disposed of by sweeping it under rug when one realizes that many authors of Constitution who agreed with their colleague Elbridge Gerry that Democracy ... [was] worst . . . of all political evils'5 at same time guarantee[d] to every State... Republican Form of Government.'6 Surveying eighteenth-century American political writing will, to be sure, illustrate confusion; but it will also illustrate differences which distinguish republicanism from democracy. At outset, one obvious source of information must be mentioned and set aside. The United States Supreme Court could be expected to give an authoritative explanation of Constitution's