WHO WERE THESE GUYS?

Who were the founders of our nation? I mean, really, who were they? Were they the guys whom we see depicted on those paintings? Or were they other people? Jack Rakove makes the very convincing argument that the founders were the people who made up the ratifying conventions that voted for the constitution that those guys in the paintings proposed to them.¹ Yes, the “painted” bunch wrote our constitution, but that document didn't take effect until it was ratified by nine of the conventions. It was eventually ratified by all the states. In total, by my count, there were 1,648 representatives at the various ratifying conventions. Not all conventions had the same number attending: the largest had 355 (Massachusetts) and the smallest had 26 (Georgia). More populated states tended to have more representatives, but there was no ordering of the number of representatives by the population size; Virginia, the largest state with about 821,000 people, had 168 attendees at its convention. In almost each state, a few of the representatives at their respective conventions were also members of the Constitutional Convention, but they made up a relatively small portion of the 1,648 representatives.

I relate some of these facts regarding the ratifying conventions because I want to support a claim I have made in numerous postings; that is, that more than any other mental construct, the founders held a federalist construct or worldview in terms of their political perspectives. Note: I don't say it is the only influential construct. As it turns out, this notion of how the founders saw politics, governance, and ideal citizenship is somewhat contentious today. According to Richard C. Sinopoli,² there are scholars who attribute to the founders a strong republican view. This would be in keeping with my contention since federalism is a particular form of republican thought. There are others who argue that the founders were influenced by liberal thought – what I have called a natural rights perspective. Here, the emphasis is on the idea that the founders were motivated in their political writings and actions by a desire to promote individual rights. Some of these scholars see these founders being swayed by the ideas of John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers.

I want to point out that I never claimed that the founders were ideologues or “true believers” of the federalist train of thought. Again, what I do believe is that more than any other construct, the founders were influenced by federalist thinking. Whether they consciously knew they were following a federalist line of thinking or even went about identifying themselves as federalist devotees or not, I, frankly, don't know. I have never read anything that makes me believe they thought this way other than the fact that those founders who were promoting the new constitution of 1787 jumped on the title, Federalists. But what I do think is that their ideas and how they saw government needed to be organized and structured – from local government to national government – following a federalist model. That model first took root on American soil with the writing and implementation of the Mayflower Compact. The basic format of the compact agreement can be noted in just about all of the founding documents that set up local jurisdictions, regional arrangements, colonial/state charters and constitutions, and of course, our national constitution – even our first constitution, the Articles of Confederation.³

Here is Sinopoli's take on how “republican” or “liberal” the founders were: “Normatively, I conclude with at least two cheers for a conception of liberalism that recognizes the value of community and participation even if it is not one such liberals as Madison and Hamilton themselves would have endorsed.”⁴ This scholar points out quite emphatically that the founders harbored both republican concerns for community and liberal concerns for individual rights and prerogatives. He seems to lean in favor of the side of the debate that sees the founders as liberals, but goes on to argue that liberalism can include a concern for communal interests. I believe that the nuanced view of the founders can be best described as federalist because integral to the federalist view is its concern with the commonwealth being formed by independent and free-willed individuals who voluntarily enter compact agreements – a presumption of liberty that is extensive and profound. By the late eighteenth century, these founders had become quite accustomed to the, by that time, traditional way of seeing political arrangements. They saw them structurally as outgrowths of the arrangements which had formed their congregational churches. It was just the way these types of things were/are done.

This goes for those attending the Constitutional Convention, although among these elites the concerns for individual rights were beginning to take a stronger hold as they saw their property rights becoming more and more threatened by “highly democratic” state governments. These entities, the states, were experiencing policy decisions – such as whether higher taxes on the big land owners and talk of nullifying debt contracts should be instituted – that were beginning to undermine the institution upon which their riches relied. Incidents such as Shay's Rebellion were highly unsettling. But as the argument over the new constitution went out to the countryside and the people got to elect their representatives for the ratifying conventions – when it got closer to the regular folks – we find a different emphasis expressed. Sinopoli points out:

Anti-federalist conceptions of civic virtue and the sources of allegiance also resided in a complex moral and political psychology, one that relied on ties of personal acquaintance and the bonds of benevolence to explain political loyalties and to argue for the inevitable weaknesses of such loyalties in a large, extended republic.⁵

Anti-federalists – a poor title for those who opposed the proposed constitution – were elected to these ratifying conventions. They were fearful of this large national government being formed and being able to take away the prerogatives of their state governments. Again, for these founders, they believed the emphasis in governance should be on the independence and integrity of the entities that make up the national federal union – in this case the former individual colonies. These entities, now the separate states, were closer to the communities they knew and loved; they were closer to the biases, prejudices, and parochial beliefs that constituted who they were. Both Federalists (promoters of the proposed constitution) and Anti-federalists were all federalists; their argument would have been better titled Centrists vs. Anti-centrists – that would have been more descriptive. The question was not whether federalism had to be instituted or dismissed. The question, better posed, was whether the level of governance was better at local federal entities or a national federal entity. The resulting compromise was a dual federal arrangement which is today symbolized by a flag with fifty stars.

1Rakove, J. N. (1996). Original meanings: Politics and ideas in the making of the constitution. New York: Vintage Books.

2Sinopoli, R. C. (1992). The foundations of American citizenship: Liberalism, the constitution, and civic virtue. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

3A scholar who has done extensive work in this area is Donald S. Lutz. You can find a good summary of his work in Lutz, D. S. (1992). A preface to American political theory. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

4Op cit., Sinopoli, p. 15.

5Ibid., p. 15.