The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays — A Closer Reading

The Machinery of Political Disillusionment

Sumner devotes sustained attention to the institutional forms that mediate between the people and their government. He traces how the 'caucus and convention' system, originally meant to realize democratic participation, instead produced a 'higher organization' that stifled spontaneity. By the 1830s, he argues, the earlier 'facility of association'—visible in movements like the Anti-Masons and Abolitionists—had vanished. In its place stood a network of committees and conventions 'ramifying down finally into the wards of great cities,' guided by professional politicians.

The result, Sumner contends, was a systematic betrayal of popular will. He cites the example of a governor elected 'by some political trickery a little more flagrant than usual' who would then deliver an inaugural address 'draw[ing] a dark picture of the effete monarchies of the Old World' while congratulating the people on their blessings. This ironic contrast between rhetoric and reality is a recurring pattern in the essays.

Free Trade, Hard Money, and Sectional Conflict

Sumner's economic arguments are embedded in historical narrative. He examines the tariff of 1828 and the compromise tariff that followed, noting that 'free trade, so far as it was represented by the compromise tariff, was the result of a coalition between Clay and Calhoun against the administration.' The South, he explains, saw the tariff as a tool by which a northern majority 'subjected their interests to those of another section.' This sectional tension, he implies, was not an accident but a structural feature of a Union used 'as a means of so subjecting them.'

The editor's preface underscores that Sumner's advocacy of 'free trade and hard money' was the central thread of his teaching and writing. The essays collected here apply that framework to specific historical moments, showing how economic policy became entangled with party politics and regional grievances.

Historical Examples as Evidence

Sumner grounds his arguments in concrete episodes. He points to the anti-Masonic movement (1826–1832) as evidence of a 'spontaneity and readiness in assembling and organizing common action which no longer exists.' The 'Liberty party (Abolitionists),' the 'Native Americans,' and the 'Anti-renters' all serve as examples of a lost capacity for grassroots mobilization. These movements, he suggests, were 'indispensable prerequisite[s] to the pure operation of the machinery of caucus and convention.'

He also notes the broader context of the 1830s: railroads, steamboats, canals, anthracite coal, rising immigration, and the transformation of newspapers from 'organs of persons and factions' into modern journalism. These developments, he argues, created 'difficulties and problems' for government, forcing a reckoning with 'what belonged to it and what did not.' The essays thus use historical detail to illuminate enduring questions about the proper scope of state action.

Readers approaching this collection should expect a polemical historian at work, one who uses the past to diagnose persistent flaws in democratic governance. Sumner's voice is direct, his examples precise, and his skepticism toward political machinery unrelenting. The essays reward attention to the specific episodes he selects—the anti-Masonic movement, the tariff battles, the rise of party conventions—because each serves as a case study in the tension between popular sovereignty and institutional capture. The editor's apparatus, including the bibliography and index, helps trace these themes across the four-volume series.

Sumner’s essays watch men argue over tariffs; I always thought of them as so much dry machinery. Yet his fondness for hard, principled systems reminds me of another quiet life—Octavia’s, where housing reform was argued through letters, not caucuses. Different arenas, same grit. That softer voice lingers in Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters — A Reader’s Guide, her own hand shaping brick and hope.