[ 310 ] RICHARD HARMOND much more confident than they once had been that their society would retain its stability and collective good sense amidst the harsh rows inevitably generated by party differences. Secondly, the political process ceased to be elitist in orientation and became self-consciously democratic—a shift that reflected, in part at least, the tremendous economic growth of the country in these years.2 One of the more intriguing aspects of this transformation in American politics was the reaction of those who had formulated their political creeds during and after the Revolution. How, for example, did these aging patriots view the neo-Federalism practiced by the Republican party? And how, generally, did they adjust, or fail to adjust, to political developments of the post-1815 era? We know a good deal about the response of the Federalists, as well as the Old Republicans from the southern states, but historians have paid less attention to the northern Old Republicans.3 Yet the latter represent an interesting and rewarding area of investigation, as the following study of Ebenezer Sage of Sag Harbor, Long Island, hopefully will demonstrate. A descendant of David Sage, an Englishman who migrated to America around 1650, Ebenezer Sage was born in Chatham, Connecticut, on August 16,1755. Little information survives concerning Ebenezer's immediate family background. We do know, though, that his father, of Political Development (New York, 1967), 90-97; Robert H. Brown, The Republic in Peril: 1812 (NewYork, 1964), 8-15; Michael Wallace, "Changing Concepts of Party in the United States: New York, 1815-1828" The American Historical Review, LXXIC (December 1968), 453-91. 2As Lee Benson remarks in The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, 1961), 13, "the boom in transportation and the dynamic expansion of the economy acted as powerful stimulants to movements inspired by the egalitarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence" 3 Shaw Livermore, Jr., The Twilight of Federalism: The Disintegration of the Federalist Party, 1815-1830 (Princeton, 1962); Norman K. Risjord, The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatives in the Age of Jefferson (New York, 1965). A11 "Old Republican" in this article refers to one whose political faith took form in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and more specifically in the 1790s. Briefly, an Old Republican, loving liberty, advocated a distinct limitation to the authority and responsibilities of the central government. A "few plain duties to be performed by a few servants" as Jefferson put it. Like Jefferson, the Old Republican believed, too, in majority rule, and hence saw the importance of educating and informing the populace. The Old Republican also worried, as we shall see, about the future of the republican experiment in America. His specific fears centered on the aims of the Federalist party and to a lesser extent on the effects of the maritime policy of Great Britain. On these fears see Brown, Republic in Peril, 1-15, 71-87.