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What significance could a lump of cheese have in revealing important political boundaries in early America? Quite a lot, according to Jeffrey Pasley, if one analyzes the origins, inspirations, and reactions to the colossal dairy creation. To Jefferson, the cheese represented the essence of America: independent, hard-working farmers fighting for a voice in government. To the Federalists, who mockingly named the creation the “Mammoth Cheese”, it was a humorous display of Jeffersonian backwardness and frivolity. Jefferson proudly held it in the East Room of the White House (non-coincidentally nicknamed the “Mammoth Room”) for public consumption for over a two-year period, and no dairy product has replicated its political impact yet.
The origin of the cheese, the western Massachusetts town of Cheshire, reveals much about a vocal faction of the Jeffersonian coalition. As Pasley points out, not only did these farmers resent the snobbish Federalists of urban New England, they also felt their Baptist beliefs were under attack by encroachments on their religious freedom. The vocal religious leader of the “cheesemongers” was priest John Leland (appropriately nicknamed the “Mammoth Priest”), who argued that Jefferson was a Christian hero “greater than Solomon”. This hyperbole is not as shocking as it is ironic; Jefferson was a devotee to Deist philosophy. However, it reveals how little Jefferson’s religious beliefs had to do with his celebrity amongst the cheesemongers; they instead admired Jefferson for his devotion to religious liberty and the yeoman ideal.
I first disagreed with Alex’s claim that the Federalist philosophy “wished nothing more than for the rich to maintain the upper hand in society and for the poorer peoples of meeker status to be barred from participating in national politics” after reading Webster’s argument in People Power. However, after examining the Federalist news response to the Cheshire Cheese, this sharp assertion appears much closer to the truth. The Federalist newsmen of the day, viewing themselves as Stewart or Colbert-esque satirists, had a clear antipathy for the cheesemongers, so far as to calling them “simpletons”, “vermin”, and “Jacobin encomium-mongers”. The latter insult was a clear reference to Jefferson’s support for the French Revolution, which many Federalists saw as a chaotic, orderless catastrophe. Nonetheless, the Cheshire cheesemongers took pride in their illustrious new nicknames. While the Federalists used the word “mammoth” as a term of barbarism and savagery, the Jeffersonians accepted it as a populist anthem: the idea that the “mammoth” populace will overwhelm the elites.
While I admire the populist dedication of the Cheshire dairy farmers to their hero Thomas Jefferson, I simply cannot argue that their situation was an accurate representation of American rural populism. The social and religious circumstances of the Cheshire township make them closer to a Republican interest group than a normal farming community. For example, the 1800 race for Massachusetts governor saw 175 votes go to the Republican candidate in Cheshire, with none going to the Federalist. While many farming areas may often have seen drastic victories for Republican candidates, there logically would be a measurable minority vote in favor of the Federalists. The lack of voting dissent in Cheshire weakens the argument that the Mammoth Cheese was the ‘American farmer’s’ response to Jefferson’s victory. For the evidence supplied, such a claim would overstate the cheese’s significance in the Jeffersonian age of popular politics.