As this blog proceeds and tracks the
development of political thought among Americans in the colonial years –
especially with the years leading up to the formation of the nation’s
governmental framework – it would be wise to review the governing challenges that
the founding fathers faced in the late 1700s.
To remind the reader what is motivating this review, is the challenge to
demonstrate the dominance of the federalist view as the founders proceeded in
their labors.
To point out a further qualifier, this
review in this posting already assumes that those early Americans, some begrudgingly,
were convinced that their future demanded the colonies and then states had to
join in some form of unity. How this
became accepted will be outlined in future postings. It is not a small part of the story, but the
goal here is to give the reader an end vision of what the founders were seeking
to accomplish.
In this overview, the insights of Daniel
Elazar will be utilized.[1] And he begins by addressing the notion that
somehow what eventually happened was, given the conditions before the founders,
preordained – it was simply the inevitable solution to what the founders faced
and what they knew as being possible.
Elazar rejects that notion and credits the founders with an original
idea not at all obvious to them or to the people they represented. Yes, one can argue it was logical, given the role
federalism played in the development of the individual colonies, but not
obvious.
That is, they entered the challenge with
a bias toward federalism. They, through
the colonial experience, were already disposed to believe that a system needed
to sustain, so as to be viable, popular governance and a system that would
reflect civil justice and morality. In
that, they sought a good commonwealth which in turn demanded a balance among
various sought-after attributes.
This reflected their short history in
organizing their colonies when they needed to find the right mix of human
liberty, functional authority, and sufficient governmental vibrancy. If hit upon, the result, it was believed,
would be strong, sustainable, democratic, and just. And this not only needed to work in terms of
the relationships among the colonies/states, but also among the various
interests (factions) that made up a national polity.
So, what stood in the way? According to Elazar, three main obstacles confronted
these political architects: a vast expanse
of territory or land even in 1787, a vibrant array of peoples or what current
language calls diversity, and the already well-established political norms and
biases existing within thirteen different polities that had developed since the
early years of the seventeenth century.
To these conditions, Elazar directly criticizes
competing views as to what was accomplished.
One is that the founders, who were in their hearts antidemocratic,
wanted to dilute the popular will by dividing it in a federalist arrangement. And further, that a good deal of American
history – in antebellum years – was about the people pushing against what the
founders established in expanding the democratic character of the American
political scene.
The second view Elazar defuncts is that even
though the founders might have been democrats (small “d”), they had the
practical problem of the lack of communication facility over the vast land mass
the states encompassed. Of course, as
technology advanced and communication facility became more sophisticated this became
less of an issue.
Therefore, the need to be a federal
system became less needed and that, in turn, goes a long way in explaining how
American politics had become more centralized especially through such programs
as the New Deal and over such concerns as civil rights. In short, a distribution of power, as
provided for under a federalist system, becomes “obsolete.”
One can cite the facts supporting some
this, for example, there were thirteen states and as previous postings try to
argue, they did generate a federalism within their politics – mostly based on
Puritanical beliefs and Enlightenment thinking.
Elazar even points out that there is research that in certain areas of
policy, the colonists had de facto federal relationships with the Crown
and Parliament.
But a priori there was no
guarantee that the states, after independence, would unite into a single governmental
arrangement. And even if they could or
would, that effort could very well be limited to some loose league or
confederacy for the sake of foreign affairs issues. The fact that the colonies united for the
sake of addressing their mutual interests vis-à-vis the Seven Years War
(the French and Indian War), relations with indigenous tribes, or in fighting
the War of Independence proved that the colonies, then the states could unite
despite a vast land territory or a diverse population.
And, of course, if one dismisses
concerns for democracy, republicanism, liberty, history is full of examples of
vast empires – Persian, Roman, Ottoman, Russian[2] – that were able over the centuries
to maintain fairly successful political control over vast areas and diverse
populations. Yes, they were, to various
degrees autocratic, but most allowed degrees of local autonomy over various
governing concerns. At the time of the
founders, the French and the English were establishing world empires. The French were particularly partial to
central control.
Yes, vast land masses could come under a
single arrangement, the question was could it do so without counting on some despotic
rule. And as is often the case, an
experiment was first tried. History
remembers it as the Articles of Confederation and not only did it not
work, but it also gave the founders useful information of what exactly
prevented it from working. The common
notion is that the Articles were totally dismissed. Donald Lutz, this blogger heard him say,
points out that much of the Articles survived in the US Constitution.
But the point is, a federal arrangement
survived with a more powerful central government.
With the opportunity to abandon a
popular government model – George Washington was being advised by his former military
subordinates to push for a centralized model – the founders stuck to a federal solution. This despite the fact that that history
provided no example that accomplished what they were trying to initiate – or
better stated, preserve. Elazar points
out,
Not only
were there no extant examples of the successful government of a large territory
except through a strong central government, but there were few small territories
governed in a “republican” manner and none offered the example of federalism as
Americans later came to know it. The two
nations then existing that had come closest to resolving the problems of
national unity without governmental centralization were the United Provinces of
the Netherlands and the Swiss Confederation.
Not only were both very small republics indeed … but the failure of the
former to solve its constitutional problems and its consequent lapse into government
by an incompetent executive and an anti-republican oligarchy was well-known
while the latter was hardly more than a protective association of independent
states with little national consciousness.
Neither could be an attractive example … [of] republicanism …[3]
But as is known today, this did not
deter the founders. The next posting
will continue with this contextual information, i.e., the challenges that
founders faced in devising the constitutional model they devised.
[1]
Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the
Constitution? Thoroughly,” in a booklet of readings, Readings for Classes Taught by Professor Elazar, prepared for a
National Endowment for the Humanities Institute (conducted in Steamboat
Springs, Colorado, 1994), 1-30.
[2] The Russian empire was larger than the original land
mass of America. According to Elazar, it
totaled 888,811 square miles in 1789.
[3]
Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution?
Thoroughly,” 19.
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