Caesarism and Republicanism in the Political Thought of Thomas E. Watson

Abstract

This article revisits the political thought of the Georgia Populist Thomas E. Watson (1856–1922), with a focus on themes such as Caesarism, agrarian equality, and republican decline. After a failed vice presidential run in 1896, Watson published a volley of books on topics such as Jefferson, the French Revolution, Roman history, and Napoleon. These works combined a predilection for Caesarist leaders from Bonaparte to Cromwell with an intense anti-monarchism. Although historians have focused on Watson’s journey from biracial organizer to racist firebrand, his later literary oeuvre has rarely been treated as offering a mature political theory. Through a close reading of Watson’s output after 1896, this article uncovers linkages between Watson’s agrarian republicanism and his Caesarist proclivities, embedded in a wider political landscape. This reading clarifies Populism’s republican debts and its tensions with debates on populism today, but also deepens our understanding of republican defenses of Caesarism in the nineteenth century.