He was a warm and decided friend to rational liberty, but a determined enemy to that democratic rage

I have been researching my Holcombe, Bibb, and Walthal lines, all leaders in Prince Edward County in Virginia at the time of the Revolution. The Holcombe and Bibb lines were instrumental in the founding of Hampden-Sydney College (November 10, 1775) just at the inception of the American Revolution. Several members of their first graduating class, including Philemon Holcombe, Jr. promptly headed south to join the Southern Campaign. He fought at both Guilford Courthouse and at Yorktown, serving to the end of the war and despite only being 20 years of age, ended the war as a Major.

The founding president and rector of Hampden–Sydney College in 1775 was Samuel Stanhope Smith, a Presbyterian missionary divine and later President of Princeton University.

In my research, I came across a reference to an old 1940s typed manuscript of the founding of Hampden-Sydney written by a later College president, Joseph Eggleston. The MS was never published but through the efforts of the College Librarian I obtained a pdf copy of the original from the College. I am now producing a Word version of it for easier access by future researchers.

In going through the MS, I came across this passage. Emphasis added.

In Volume I:57, of the 1821 edition of Sermons of Samuel Stanhope Smith, D.D., is a brief memoir by Rev. Frederick Beasley, a pupil and intimate friend, in which he says of President Smith:

"With politics he never publicly interfered, after the conclusion of the revolutionary war, although at its commencement in his youth, he is said to have assisted by his eloquent sermons in exciting among the people in the state of Virginia a spirit of resistance to the measures at that time proposed and adopted by the parliament of England. He was a warm and decided friend to rational liberty, but a determined enemy to that democratic rage, which would level all those distinctions so necessary to the existence of society, pull down authorities and powers, and under the sacred name of liberty, give rise to a general insubordination and licentiousness, incompatible with the existence of a just and equal government. Under these impressions, he was a warm supporter of the administration of Washington, and ranked among those who, amidst the party distinctions of the times, were denominated federalists."

Reading through the history of the Revolution, it is so striking how so many of the leaders saw the value and philosophical grounding needed in democracy but were also so aware of its inherent instability and tendency towards rule by mob. They did everything in their power to obtain all the benefits of democracy while hemming and hedging it with checks, and balances, and structural counterweights to prevent the devolution to rule by mob.

It is so easy to see some of those discussions as excess concern. What is so wrong with democracy? What were they afraid of?

Well, exactly what we are experiencing now. Rule by mob.

I am not of the view that we are facing any sort of apocalyptic end-times. But we are certainly being reminded of the dangers of unfettered majoritarian mobs and impassioned rhetoric. BLM, Antifa, and Critical Theory/Social Justice Warriors are no real threat to the nation. True believers of those cults are below one percent.

But the Founders knew, as we have forgotten that there is much damage to be accomplished by a small but zealot group of true believers. The hunger for autocratic or state power is in the nature of us as beasts. We have to choose the classical liberal approach in which we elect to respect the rights of others and commit to a fair and just system of collective governance in which no one get's everything they want but everyone can participate in the process and with sufficient checks and balances that shared compromise is the outcome not coercion from a majority or from a zealot mob.