The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 by Gordon S. Wood

Author:Gordon S. Wood [Wood, Gordon S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780807824221
Google: 1JnDwAEACAAJ
Publisher: Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg, Va.
Published: 1998-11-15T00:11:56.992523+00:00

4. A POWER SUPERIOR TO THE ORDINARY LEGISLATURE

The mistrust of all men and all institutions set above the people-at-large was precisely the point. No legislative assembly, however representative, seemed capable of satisfying the demands and grievances of large numbers of Americans. And it was this dissatisfaction and the suspicion it engendered, as much as the idea of fundamental law, that explained the prominence that one kind of convention existing outside of the normal representative legislature gained in American thought. The unique position of legitimacy that the constitutional convention eventually attained, together with its close connection with the new conception of a constitution, has tended to obscure the disruptive forces that made such an extralegislative body possible and comprehensible—forces that had been laid bare at the very beginning of the Revolutionary movement. “Some step forth and tell you,” said Philip Livingston in 1775 in answer to New York Tories, “you ought to support your Representatives—what! right or wrong!”42 Out of just such exhortations to civil disobedience and such pervasive mistrust of the representational process was the conception of the constituent convention essentially formed.

As early as 1775 some Whigs were observing that the people in their revolutionary conventions had never been more fully and fairly represented in any legislatures in their history.43 “The more just and equal representations of the people in the Colony Congresses,” wrote Ezra Stiles, “acquire more and more weight, and feel more liberty to act for the public good unchecked by an arbitrary Governor.” When the South Carolina Congress in March 1775 admonished the New York legislature, which was still sitting, for not joining in the general association of the colonies, it did so with an argument that had radical implications for the place of the convention and the people's relation to the institutions of government that few Whigs then envisioned. Perhaps the New York Assembly's refusal to act, suggested the South Carolina Congress, stemmed from a doubt of its authority, having been chosen prior to the present dispute. Surely “the legal representatives” of the people of New York were not really representing “the opinion of their constituents,” but only intended to leave the voicing of that opinion “to another representation, not so much according to the letter of the law, but equally respectable, and as much to be depended on.” The constituted legislature of New York must realize that it was not “the definitive voice of the colony.” As the experience of the other colonies was demonstrating, other bodies, conventions or congresses, could perhaps better reflect the people's will than the regular legislatures. Yet precisely because the conventions were irregular bodies, “extraordinary perhaps in their nature, but warranted by necessity,” dissatisfied groups could contend that even they were unequal to the “new affairs of the utmost importance.” In fact simply to infer that the people's will was being fully represented by any institution, to infer that “the acts of those Representatives are the acts of their constituents,” was not enough for some in these years, and in the years ahead it was to become never enough.

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