| In 1800 Yale's Phi Beta Kappa chapter withdrew its sponsorship from the oration that Abraham Bishop had prepared for the society's anniversary celebration. Outraged because his address attacked the policies of the Federalist administration, Bishop's opponents asserted that the organization had nothing to do with politics and that controversy had never intruded into their festivities. Despite their claims, an examination of the earliest existing Phi Beta Kappa discourses reveals a diversity of opinions on partisan issues. Except for Bishop, however, no one between 1795 and 1800 challenged the prevailing distribution of power.;Contrary to these expectations, the surviving Phi Beta Kappa orations between 1782 and 1837 suggest that the speakers' social and political choices did not correlate with specific systems of ideas. In fact, individuals with varying experiences employed the available philosophy in ways that helped them adapt to a developing market economy. Conflicts arose because Americans, limited by their circumstances, were trying to shape the institutions in which they were participating. Neither the personal nor educational backgrounds of the Phi Beta Kappa orators automatically served as a basis for predicting their responses to social and political questions. In the nineteenth century, educators aligned with the ruling orders, like Bishop's adversaries, found that the philosophy they advocated could promote consequences other than those they sanctioned.;By the end of the eighteenth century, many educated Americans, not just members of the Phi Beta Kappa, were wielding intellectual categories as weapons in their battles over economic, political, and social transformations. Seeking a monopoly on the truth, they attributed fundamental conflicts over who should benefit from the development of the United States to the inadequacies of their rivals' philosophy. Adherents of the dominant elements presumed that they could curb disquieting tendencies by eradicating a particular version of Enlightenment thought. |
