The Bill of Rights by Carol Berkin

Author:Carol Berkin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

XIII

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Whether Federalist or Antifederalist, nationalist or provincial, the men who led the new nation had much more in common than they might have conceded in the heat of their political and ideological struggles. Patrick Henry and Elbridge Gerry as much as George Washington and James Madison were committed to establishing a republic and to the principles of John Locke’s theory of government as a social contract. Men who supported the Constitution and men who opposed it rejected monarchy with equal passion, and patriots of every stripe refused the legal establishment of an aristocracy. As members of the Revolutionary generation, they took pride in being citizens of a republic even if they were uncertain that their bold experiment would survive.

What, then, separated Federalist from Antifederalist? The most fundamental difference was this: supporters of a new constitution believed a strong national government would best serve the country; defenders of a continued league of friendship believed the people would be best served as citizens of their sovereign states. Localism thus clashed with nationalism—and the compromise devised by the Philadelphia convention satisfied no one fully.

The delegates to the Philadelphia convention called that compromise federalism. It was born out of a realistic assessment of what the voters would tolerate and what the sovereign states might be willing to accept: a federal system, granting certain explicit powers to the central government, leaving other powers and responsibilities to the existing state governments, and authorizing some powers to be shared by both. At the convention, Alexander Hamilton declared it unworkable—and eight decades later, the Civil War almost proved him correct.

The men who wrote the Constitution argued that America was in crisis: its trade and commerce with the outside world were in the doldrums; its internal commerce was virtually paralyzed by state rivalries; its credit at home and abroad was an embarrassment and a hindrance to economic growth; its borders were unsecured against attack by enemy nations; and its citizens and political structure were unprotected against the dangers of insurrection and anarchy from within. These men believed the Confederation was incapable of finding solutions to the problems that plagued the nation and condemned the state governments for their refusal to cooperate in trying. But their opponents saw a very different America. They conceded that there were problems, but their prognosis was decidedly positive. The country was making steady progress toward prosperity; its natural resources were bountiful; its population was young and hearty and growing through immigration and natural increase; and its citizens were largely content with their circumstances. Thus they saw no reason to sacrifice a league of friendship for what they feared would become a “consolidated” or national government. The Articles of Confederation, imperfect though they might be, embodied the goals of the Revolution and ought to be strengthened, not cast aside.

Even if the situation was temporarily dire, the defenders of the league of friendship created by the Articles believed the cost of the convention’s solution was too high. They saw a host of dangers in the superimposition of this new government over local institutions.

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