Republicanism was a theory with a known failure mode. Every educated American had read that republics die of luxury and corruption, and almost every political fight of the early republic is people accusing each other of being the symptom.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
AM2-091 · The Republican Experiment — Open the drawer
A handwritten list recording names, ages, and property valuations of men enrolled in a local militia company, typical of early republic civic participation records that conflated republican virtue with economic standing and armed readiness.
AM2-092 · The Republican Experiment — What is this thing?
A gilt eagle medal suspended from a blue ribbon, awarded to Continental Army officers after 1783. Membership was hereditary and exclusive, sparking immediate accusations of aristocratic corruption in the new republic.
AM2-093 · The Republican Experiment — Read the source
General George Washington's farewell address to state governors upon resigning his military commission, warning against sectional jealousy and the corruption of republican virtue through luxury and self-interest.
AM2-094 · The Republican Experiment — Map it / time it
A 1791 printed petition opposing Alexander Hamilton's Bank of the United States, signed by Philadelphia merchants and artisans. Circulated regionally to build opposition, it names specific corrupting mechanisms—monopoly, debt, aristocracy—that petitioners claimed threatened republican virtue.
AM2-095 · The Republican Experiment — Two sources disagree
A 1798 printed broadside accusing Republican leaders of corruption and monarchist conspiracy, exemplifying how early Americans weaponized classical republican theory against political opponents during the party conflicts of the 1790s.
AM2-096 · The Republican Experiment — State the claim
A four-volume collection of 144 political essays published 1720–1723 in London by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, reprinted in America 1754–1755. Cato's Letters became the most widely cited republican theory text in colonial America, warning that luxury, standing armies, and executive power destroy free states.
AM2-097 · The Republican Experiment — Take the other side
Hamilton's 1791 Treasury report arguing federal support for American manufacturing. Wrapped classical republican language around concrete demands for tariffs, bounties, and infrastructure—material interests dressed in Enlightenment vocabulary.
AM2-098 · The Republican Experiment — Weigh it
A representative merchant's letter of credit from the 1790s American republic, documenting a trader's request for financial backing. Such documents reveal whether republican political language masked practical economic interests or reflected genuine ideological commitment.
AM2-099 · The Republican Experiment — Build the answer
A reprinted passage from Cato's Letters (1720–1723), the political essays that taught American colonists to recognize luxury and corruption as republican death-signs, distributed as a cheap printed sheet for public reading.
AM2-100 · The Republican Experiment — For the file
A four-volume collection of 144 essays on republican virtue, corruption, and the decay of states, widely reprinted in the colonies and read by the founding generation as a manual of political warning.
AM2-101 · The Republican Experiment — Go and look
A working account book from a Philadelphia import-export merchant, recording credit transactions, debt collection, and inventory during the ratification crisis and early federal period.
AM2-102 · The Republican Experiment — Now, today
James Madison's essay arguing that a large republic could control factionalism through representation and scale, directly addressing the founding generation's fear that republics inevitably collapse into corruption and mob rule.
AM2-103 · The Republican Experiment — Teach it back
A collected edition of early 18th-century political essays warning that republics collapse into tyranny through luxury and corruption, widely read and cited by American founders as diagnosis of political danger.
AM2-104 · The Republican Experiment — The other place
A wooden pole erected by western Pennsylvania farmers in 1794 to obstruct tax collectors, embodying rural resistance to federal authority and revealing how republican ideals operated differently in frontier regions without classical education or merchant infrastructure.
AM2-105 · The Republican Experiment — One object, close
A gold eagle insignia worn by Revolutionary War officers on a blue ribbon, awarded by the hereditary Society of the Cincinnati (founded 1783). The badge sparked fierce republican debate over aristocracy, corruption, and whether the Revolution had preserved or betrayed its principles.
From the gallery’s own wall — “AM2-091 · The Republican Experiment — Open the drawer”.