“As Happy a Government as Any on Earth”: Legal Officers’ Nostalgia for British Law and Order During Jacksonian America

On August 24, 1834, Suffolk County, Massachusetts Sheriff Charles P. Sumner replied to an English friend, Joseph Bartrum, who had written to the sheriff with regards to the political and social divisiveness in England that he experienced upon returning home from his 10-year stay in the United States. Sumner suggested that Bartrum should lay aside his “gloomy forebodings” and accept how England maintained the most “happy a government as any on earth” and Bartrum should be proud to sing “Rule Britannia, Great and Free!” In comparison to England, Sumner asserted that the violent riots and mobs were making the United States into a place where nobody could “expect long life and peace.” Sumner’s friendly encouragements were more than positive advice and instead, they reflected his nostalgic look back to the eighteenth-century monarchial society where sheriffs and their deputies received pride and prestige for maintaining law and order.