Abstract
When George Washington assumed his duties as first President of the United States under the Constitution of 1787, he warned his fellow citizens that their new government, ‘laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government’, represented a new departure in the political world, such that ‘the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People’3 The efforts of Washington and his comrades to establish republican government in North America had culminated in a United States constitution that guaranteed ‘to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government’.4 This study will seek to establish what the word ‘republic’ meant to Washirigton’s fellow Americans when they approved republicanism as the ideological basis of their constitutional experiment. This will be an exercise in constitutional history. I do not mean to say how republicanism should be applied or interpreted today, but only to establish what the word ‘republic’ signified to North Americans when they ratified their constitution.5
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Notes
There is a vast bibliography on American ‘republican’ ideology. See e.g., Robert E. Shalhope, Toward a Synthesis: The Emergence of an Understanding of Republicanism in American Historiography’, WMQ 29 (1972):49–80; idem, ‘Republicanism and Early American Historiography,’ WMQ 39 (1982):334–56. The best studies of American Republicanism between 1776 and 1787 are Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (New York, 1969), and Willi Paul Adams, ‘Republicanism in Political Rhetoric Before 1776’, Political Science Quarterly 85 (1970):397–421. Other studies include John T. Agresto, ‘Liberty, Virtue, and Republicanism’, Review of Politics 39 (1977):473–504; Joyce Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology (Ithaca, NY, 1978) (hereafter cited as Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion)’, John Patrick Diggins, The Lost Soul of American Politics: Virtue, Self-interest, and the Foundations of Liberalism (Chicago, 1984); Russell L. Hanson, ‘“Commons” and “Commonwealth” at the American Founding: Democratic Republicanism as the New American Hybrid’, in Conceptual Change and the Constitution, ed. Terence Ball and J. G. A. Pocock (Lawrence, Kansas, 1988); Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millenium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven, 1977); Linda R. Hirshman (ed.), ‘Symposium on Classical Philosophy and the American Constitutional Order’, Chicago—Kent Law Review 66 (1990) No. 1; Cecilia Kenyon, ‘Republicanism and Radicalism in the American Revolution: An Old-Fashioned Interpretation’, WMQ 19 (1962):153–82; Linda K. Kerber, ‘The Republican Ideology of the Revolutionary Generation’, American Quarterly 37 (1985):474–95; James Kloppenberg, The Virtues of Liberalism: Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethics in Early American Political Discourse’, Journal of American History 74 (1987):9– 33; Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth Century England and America (Ithaca, NY, 1990); idem, ‘Republican Revisionism Revisited’, AHR 87 (1982):629–64; Jan Lewis, The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic’, WMQ 44 (1987):689–721; Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980); Thomas L. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism, the Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago, 1988); Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1992); Neal Riemer, The Republicanism of James Madison’, Political Science Quarterly 69 (1954):45–64; Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government (Stanford, Cal., 1970); Symposium (Yale); Steven Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820 (Baltmore, 1987); William Wiecek, The Guarantee Clause of the United States Constitution (1972); Gordon S. Wood, ‘Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution’, Chicago—Kent Law Review 66 (1990):13–38; Jean Yarbrough, ‘Republicanism Reconsidered: Some Thoughts on the Foundation and Preservation of the American Republic’, Review of Politics 4 (1979):61–95.
Mercy Otis Warren, History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution, 2 vols. ed. L. H. Cohen (Boston 1805, repr. Indianapolis, Ind., 1988), II:601.
Cf. H. Powell, ‘Rules for Originalists’, Virginia Law Review 73 (1987):659, 679–80.
For American political ideology during the revolutionary era, see Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1976) (hereafter cited as Bailyn, Ideological Origins); idem, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1968); Lance Banning, ‘Some Second Thoughts on Virtue and the Course of Revolutionary Thinking’, in Conceptual Changes, ed. Terence Ball and J. G. A. Pocock (Lawrence, Kan., 1988), 194–212; Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein and Edward C. Carter II (eds), Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987); Richard Buel, Jr, ‘Democracy and the American Revolution: A Frame of Reference,’ WMQ 21 (1964):165–90; Henry S. Com-mager, Empire of Reason (Garden City, NJ, 1977); Robert H. Horwitz (ed.), The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, 3rd edn, (Charlottesville, Va., 1986); Margaret Atwood Judson, The Crisis of the Constitution: An Essay in Constitutional and Political Thought in England, 1603–1645 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1949); Kahn, ‘Reason and Will in the Origins of American Constitutionalism’, Yale Law Journal 98 (1989):449; Michael Kammen, Spheres of Liberty: Changing Perceptions of Liberty in American Culture (Madison, Wisconsin, 1986); Cecelia Kenyon, ‘Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists on the Nature of Representative Government,’ WMQ 12 (1955):3–43; Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1980); Lawrence Leder, Liberty and Authority: Early American Political Ideology, 1689–1763 (Chicago, 1968); Michael Lienesch, New Order of the Ages: Time and the Constitution, and the Making of Modern American Political Thought (Princeton, NJ, 1968); Jackson Turner Main, The Anti-Federalists: Critics of the Constitution, 1781–1788 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1961); idem, Political Parties Before the Constitution (Chapel Hill, NC, 1973); McDonald; idem, E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic, 1776–1790 (Boston, 1965); Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763–1789 (Chicago, 1956); idem, Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, 1988); Peter S. Onuf, ‘Reflections on the Founding: Constitutional Historiography in Bicentennial Perspective,’ WMQ 46 (1989):341–75; John Philip Reid, The Concept of Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution (Chicago, 1988); idem, Constitutional History of the American Revolution I (Madison, Wisconsin, 1986); idem, The Authority of Rights (Madison, Wisconsin, 1986); idem, ‘The Irrelevance of the Declaration’, in Law in the American Revolution and the Revolution in the Law: A Collection of Review Essays on American Legal History, ed. Hendrik Hartog (New York, 1981), 46–89; Clinton Rossiter, The Political Thought of the American Revolution (New York, 1963); idem, Seedtime of the Republic (New York, 1954);bert E. Shalhope, The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760–1800 (Boston, 1990); Gordon S. Wood, ‘The Democratic Mind in the American Revolution’, in Horwitz, 109; idem, ‘Ideology and the Origins of Liberal America’, WMQ 44 (1987):628–40; idem, ‘Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution’, in Beyond Confederation, ed. Stephen Botein, 69–112; idem, ‘Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution’, WMQ 23 (1966):3–32.
Useful collections of early documents include W. B. Allen (ed.), George Washington: A Collection (Indianapolis, Ind., 1988); Bernard Bailyn (ed.), Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965); Elliot; Farrand; Washington Ford et al. (eds), Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, DC, 1904–1937); Oscar Handlin and Mary Handlin (eds), The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966); Robert Green McCloskey (ed.), The Works of James Wilson (Cambridge, Mass., 1967); Hyneman and Lutz; David L. Jacobsen (ed.), The English Libertarian Heritage: From the Writings of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in The Independent Whig and Cato’s Letters (Indianapolis, Ind., 1965); Jensen; J. P. Kenyon (ed.), The Stuart Constitution, 1603–1688 (Cambridge, 1966); James Madison (ed.), Journal of the Federal Convention (Washington, 1840); J. G. A. Pocock (ed.), The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge, England, 1977); Storing; Robert J. Taylor (ed.), Massachusetts, Colony to Commonwealth: Documents on the Formation of its Constitution, 1775–1780 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1961); Thorpe; E. Neville Williams (ed.), The Eighteenth-Century Constitution, 1688–1815: Documents and Commentary (Cambridge, Mass., 1960).
Cf. Robert H. Cover, The Supreme Court 1982 Term. Foreword: Nomos and Narrative’, Harvard Law Review 97 (1983):4.
Republican attitudes have had a recent vogue in law schools, primarily in connection with contemporary constitutional controversies, or as exercises in political philosophy. But lawyers have paid comparatively little attention to the Constitution of 1787, and the historical and narrative foundations of the republican ideals they advocate. See e.g., Mortimer Sellers, ‘Republican Authority’, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 5 (1992):257; idem, ‘Republican Impartiality’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 11 (1991):273; Frank Michelman, ‘Law’s Republic’, Yale Law Journal 97 (1988):1493; Cass Sunstein, ‘Interest Groups in American Public Law’, Stanford Law Review 38 (1985):29; Suzanna Sherry, ‘Civic Virtue and the Feminine Voice in Constitutional Adjudication’, Virginia Law Review 76 (1986):543.
The best and most detailed existing study of American republican ideology is Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1969). Wood’s excellent book considers the development of republican ideology between the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and rightly concludes that the Americans of 1787 ‘shattered the classical Whig world of 1776’ (p. 606). But Wood’s interest in American exceptionalism (p. 615) and the lapse of Whig ideology causes him to overstate the originality of the Constitution’s republicanism. Wood’s famous chapter on ‘The Relevance of John Adams’ goes to considerable lengths to disassociate the bicameral balanced republic of Adams’s Defence from the United States Constitution which mirrored it (pp. 580–82). This is seriously misleading, because it obscures the extent to which Adams and other Americans embraced properly regulated popular sovereignty from the beginning (e.g., pp. 585–6), despite condemning democracy itself as incompatible with republicanism. To some extent Wood’s use of the term ‘republican’ anticipates the Jeffersonian ‘republicanism’ of the 1790s. I will restrict myself more explicitly to the Constitution of 1787.
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Sellers, M.N.S. (1994). Introduction. In: American Republicanism. Studies in Modern History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-13347-5_1
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