Responsibility and the Public Sphere

One of the many ambivalences in the Federalist experience of the 1780s was towards the public sphere, or as George Washington would probably have called it (he was fond of theatrical metaphors) 'the national stage'.

Retirement fantasies were common and acted-upon to different extents: Washington 'retired' but continued his political involvement on many levels - whether or not entirely by his own choice. Hamilton retired from political life in favour of his legal practice, but he of course re-entered the scene in 1786. Madison and Jay were very much engaged in the public life of nation and state. Jefferson and Adams were away from America (but acting on its behalf), and so had a different relationship again to the public sphere.

The question of a proper relationship to public life and the public sphere is (I now see!) closely bound up with the problem of adulthood, and coming-of-age. Not to get too speculative, but we can presumably link childhood with privacy and adulthood with being in public - even more so in the eighteenth-century, I would imagine. For revolutionary leaders in the 1780s, facing the idea that they were now responsible for the country's wellbeing, their renegotiation of the public sphere was an important part of coming of age.