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American Aristocracy
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In any event, despite Bailyn’s assertion that “nowhere in eighteenth century America had
the legal attributes of nobility been recognized or perpetuated”
197
there were class hierarchies
based on land-ownership, particularly in the rural counties of New York where great estates had
been granted to individual families under royal patents. Even on Cooper’s frontier, the notion of
the rugged individualist staking out a homestead was often an inflated or mistaken one. Of that
breed, only Natty remains by this time in Cooper’s Templeton.
Indeed, the large estates were essentially fiefdoms and for many major landholders in the
area. In his afterword to The Pioneers, Robert Spiller wrote, “society depended upon property,
and family status upon primogeniture, as rigidly as in England or Holland.”
198
Incredibly, it
wasn’t until the 1780s that the state legislature “did abrogate all remnants of feudal legal
privilege.” The legislation came in a hurry, but it was after years of an entrenched system that
would not go away quietly or quickly. “The essence of radical policy, on matters other than
royalism, was that citizens’ opportunity should replace gentlemen’s privilege.”
199
William Cooper himself recognized this, out of either egalitarianism or enlightened self-
interest. In either case, he sold rather than rented his land in Otsego. Nevertheless, this neck of
rural New York in the 1790s was still a land in transition and the vestiges of privilege were
obvious. At the Temple household, we see elegance and a small feast, but soon learn that most
people in Templeton, as they were in Cooperstown, were quite poor. In the Christmas church
scene, Cooper shows a ragged group primarily dressed in homespun or “a faded silk, that had
gone through at least three generations, over coarse, woolen black stockings.”
200
When the
townspeople sit, they avoid the front row as that was to be “occupied by the principal personages
of the village and its vicinity,” although “[t]his distinction was rather a gratuitous concession
196
Slotkin 103
197
Bailyn 275
198
Cooper 439-440
199
Countryman 243
200
Cooper 117
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made by the poorer and less polished part of the population than a right claimed by the favored
few.”
201
Although this is a “concession” Cooper makes clear that there is a clear hierarchy in the
town. Writing of the nicer houses in town, he states, “In truth, the occupants of these favored
habitations were the nobles of Templeton, as Marmaduke was its king.”
202
Traditional notions of
class also persist in the constant questions about whether Oliver is a “gentleman” or if he
possesses “nobility” and Temple’s appointment of his boorish cousin Richard as the county
sheriff reeks of nepotism and privilege.
In “Landownership and Representation of Social Conflict in
The Pioneers,”
Douglas
Buchholz tries to place issues of class in a Marxist framework and posit them as the central and
defining conflict in The Pioneers: “While in socio-historical terms, the Billy Kirby-Judge
Temple-Natty Bumppo conflict encapsulates the overall struggle in early American society
between subsistence hunters and farmers (Indian and white), that is, the nascent proletariat and
the bourgeoisie, it always appears in the novel as a dispute between just these representatives of
their classes.”
203
Rather than view Natty – or even Kirby - as members of a “nascent proletariat,” however,
it seems more appropriate to define them otherwise. Natty is not representative of the origin of
any class rather than the last vestige of one. He will not remain and change, but rather leave and
go west to find comfort in the unsettled wilderness again. Kirby, meanwhile, is too independent
to be considered proletariat. “For weeks he would lounge around the taverns of the county, in a
state of perfect idleness, or doing small jobs for his liquor and his meals, and cavilling with
applicants about the prices of his labor; frequently preferring idleness to an abatement of a little
of his independence, or a cent in his wages.”
204
To view the conflict as the emergence of a class
representation rather than as part of an ongoing continuum is to miss the point that early
Americans lived in a historical context that was American as well as European. Temple and
Kirby have entered a land with its own history and peoples. It was for placing the story in that
very context – the context that William Cooper ignored - that Taylor praised James Fenimore
Cooper.
201
Cooper 119
202
Cooper 39
203
Buchholz 2
204
Cooper 181
50
Still, class distinctions remain, at least in the minds of some who enjoy the trappings of
power and privilege. Even Temple’s warmth toward Natty, seemingly paternalistic (and, hence,
aristocratic) in nature, invites scorn from Richard: “Well, ‘Duke, I call this democracy, not
republicanism; but I say nothing; only let him keep within the law, or I shall show him that the
freedom of even this country is under wholesome restraint.”
205
At the same time, though, the
liberal egalitarian message of the Revolution is coming to be recognized in Templeton. After
Temple accidentally shoots Oliver, several of the men discuss the possibility of a lawsuit against
Temple, prompting this comment from Doolittle, the attorney:
The law, gentlemen, is no respecter of persons in a free country. It is one of the great
blessings that has been handed down to us from our ancestors, that all men are equal
in the eye of the laws, as they are by nater. Though some may get property, no one
knows how, yet they are not privileged to transgress the laws any more than the
poorest citizen in the State.
206
Wealth may be unevenly distributed and perpetuated, but it is does not put anyone above
the law. (Also, as we find later, wealth and land are not a consideration for who may sit on a jury
in the county.) What is interesting about this comment, however, is the statement that “some may
get property, no one knows how.”
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