Many have written of the profound impact America's fragmented, decentralized political institutions have had on American political development (Schattschnieder, 1942; McConnell, 1966; Huntington, 1982; Lowi, 1984). The argument, even if a bit overstated, is rather simple: The fragmentation of political power in America has helped create a polity in which it is exceedingly difficult to mobilize and sustain forces promoting broad policies favoring large, diffuse and disorganized interests. The consequence of these peculiar institutional rules has been a particularly pluralist political system which is structurally biased against the expansion and full development of a social democratic modern welfare state (Steinmo, 1993, 1996).

But the obvious question which arises for this institutionalist explanation for "American Exceptionalism" is: Where did these institutions come from? It is this question that I, perhaps rather naively, seek to answer here. In the following pages I offer a modest attempt at a political economy of Revolutionary America.

I am drawn to this era of American political development because I am interested in American politics and public policy and thus seek to better understand the institutional foundations of later political development. I am also fascinated in this epoch strikes me as ideal ground for exploring the role of ideas and interests in the construction of a particularly significant and set of political institutions. When I began this project I assumed (correctly it turns out) that there would be substantial literatures exploring both the ideas and the interests that lay behind the U.S. Constitution. Like every political scientist I have long been aware of the two great arguments which have been posited to explain the U.S. Constitution, namely: Charles Beard's, interest based argument and the more common, idea based argument. I must admit, however, I was naive about the overwhelming volume of literature on the US founding period. At this point, I can say that I have only begun to scratch the surface of this literature. I have been fascinated to find (so far at least) that while there are literally thousands of books written on the founding period, very few indeed seem to ask the rather simple questions that the student of comparative political economy is most likely to ask. What follows is an early attempt to cut into this epoch and its literature with the eye of an historical institutionalist.

The story I develop below argues two coincident themes: On the one hand, I present the essential of an economic interest based argument for the unique character of American political institutions. At the same time, I offer an idealist explanation for the unique character of American political institutions. I do not believe that one can find a coherent and comprehensive explanation for these institutional outcomes that emphasizes ideas over interests or visa versa. The story; below will instead explore the interactive relationship between these two variables.

In this analysis I emphasize geography. Here, and in what will hopefully later become a book which traces the development of American political institutions and ideas through time, I stress the ways in which America's unique geographic inheritance is a fundamental element necessary to understand her unique political development. Surprisingly, to me at least, the significance of the enormous resource wealth found in North America and the existence of vast tracts of land available for white Americans to expand into and exploit are little appreciated in most modern discussions of American exceptionalism. I argue that we cannot begin to understand why American ideas are different unless we appreciate the ways this land has been different. At the same time (though I develop this later in the book) I argue that we cannot begin to understand the ways in which American political institutions have developed over the past 200 years absent an understanding of the ways in which America's enormous and rich frontier has helped shape the people we have become.⁽¹⁾

Specifically in this paper I will argue that a common thread runs through early American history: The white man's desire to exploit the enormous physical resources found in the North American continent. I will suggest that the very abundance available on this continent is the foundation upon which white Americans came to interpret their individual and collective self-interest as well as their perceptions of what made for a good society. I will argue that the relatively easy access to the vast resources in the New World contributed to the comparatively egalitarian social structure and ideology that developed in most of rural America (which was most of America) by the mid-1700's. Moreover, the economic structure, commercial interests, and beliefs about the good society that had developed by this time depended upon the continued expansion into, and exploitation of, the American frontier.

Britain's attempt to reign in its colonial possessions in North America offended the egalitarian and nascent republican ideas in the colonies at the same time that they threatened the economic interests of both the rural farmer and urban elite. The famous rhetorical charge of "no taxation without representation" in itself reveals the ways in which economic interest and philosophical ideas were already intermingled in Revolutionary America. As we shall see, the issue of access to land - or more precisely the British attempts to close off the frontier to the colonists - was perhaps an even more important mobilizing agent. But with this issue as well, both high minded ideals and raw economic self-interests were powerful motivators.

The story below also reveals how ideas themselves can have mobilizing power. Specifically, we shall see how American elite's attempts to mobilize the colonies against the British, egalitarian and democratic ideas were used as rhetorical tools. These ideas found fertile ground in many sectors amongst the colonists and were effective in bringing otherwise uncommitted or equivocal individuals into the fray. But once these ideas were unleashed, it was difficult to control them. Perhaps rather unexpectedly (for the political and economic elite in revolutionary America) revolutionary state and local governments were increasingly subject to popular and democratic forces. Much to the chagrin of the more established elite, lower class people increasingly saw the state and local legislatures as instruments to promote their interests and ideas.

The increasingly popular egalitarian ideology and democratic institutions created after the Revolution soon frighted many of America's commercial and landed elite. Thus a counter-revolution was called for. What followed was a reconstitution of the American polity (Wood, 1969). The Articles of Confederation were inadequate in part because they yielded insufficient power to national institutions - which were necessary to continue the successful exploitation of the vast lands of the North American continent. The Articles also disadvantaged commercial interests in this country because they left too much power in the hands of average Americans and localized institutions. But the egalitarian ideas sprouted in the American frontier and fertilized by the rhetoric the Revolutionary leadership now held political force on their own. Thus, while the intent of the Federalist reformers was clearly to put cap on and even roll back the democratic tendencies emerging in America, the specific institutional configuration had to be constructed and defended in the context of the democratic ideas and rhetoric which these same men had once promoted.

In saying this, however, I do not mean to suggest that the specific structure of the American Constitution was purely and simply a trick played by the economic elite on the unsuspecting lower classes. Quite the contrary, there can be little doubt that many of the Founding Fathers themselves were taken in by the ideas and values of a more democratic and more egalitarian society. Moreover, the democratic precedent had already been set thereby guaranteeing that whatever the Convention agreed to, some kind of ratifying process would be necessary. In other words, people would need to be persuaded that a new political system was necessary and that these particular institutions were good.

In short, neither interest nor ideas by themselves will get us very far in explaining why America became a nation; nor can either of these variables standing by themselves do much to help us understand why this country built the particular institutions in the late 18^th century which have subsequently had such a profound impact on the nation and the people we have become. Instead, the argument that follows (at least once it is more fully developed) explores the iterative relationship between ideas and interests as an explanation for America's unique political institutions.
 
 

The Promised Land

Let me begin with the obvious - the early Colonists came to North America both in order to exercise their religious faiths and because there were enormous resources here upon which they could build better lives. The principle colonialists, the British, German, Dutch and French⁽²⁾ each had their own motivations, to be sure. But it was the existence of free land to be exploited that was the common lure that drew these hardy people to the New World.

I will not belabor the well worn arguments about the type of people who settled in this New World. It may be true that many were more adventurous than their kin who stayed behind. It was not true, however, that they came because they were more "individualistic" than those that remained. Nor, as Martin Shain has exhaustively documented, did they come here with the intent of establishing societies noted for their liberal freedoms and/or open attitudes. Quite the contrary, the hope of many early colonists was instead to establish tightly controlled and profoundly regulated moral communities. Indeed, many came precisely because of their disaffection of the growing liberalism and "immorality" of the British folk. Nathaniel Hawthorn's, Scarlet Letter, tells us more of life in the early colonial period than J. Hector St. John de Cre'vecoeur's, Letters from an American Farmer.

But, whatever the original motivations of the early settlers to North America, the existence of the incredible tracts of land just beyond the village or stockade shaped who they (or more precisely, their children) became. As Richard Slotkin suggests "the problem was more political than psychological." How, for example could those charged with controlling and managing the new colonists "keep the colonists from dispersing to hunt for gold, glory, and the satisfaction of their hearts' Faustian desires."

Economic incentives for preserving colonial solidarity went far in maintaining order; so long as it was profitable to stay together, an acknowledged leader might rule his people. Where economic benefit was in any way or degree dubious, military force or the leader's strength of character might still hold the colony subject. But without a shared commitment to a single goal among all members of the colony, the atomistic tendencies might swiftly destroy it. Every colonial leader shared this same problem.... Puritan Massachusetts, itself a fugitive from England, considered itself plagued by the tendency of its people to emigrate into the woods, beyond the pale of its godly rule (Slotkin, 1973:36).

In their attempts to maintain control and discipline, these political/religious leaders built ever tighter ideological boundaries around their communities. And, as Slotkin, exhaustively demonstrates, the lure of land and freedom beyond the community's control provided these leaders incentives to mythologize the naked wilderness and the wild Indians beyond the village's protection in order to draw the noose ever tighter around their fellow settlers. "A shared sense of mission, embodied in a vision or metaphoric image, was a chief source of cohesion in colonial enterprise, both in the psychological and , consequently, the practical sense. By appealing to a shared view of the meaning of their life in the New World -- a kind of myth -- leaders could quell or hold in check the atomistic individual wills of their people" (Slotkin, 1973:36). In short, the wilderness helped shape the ideas and beliefs of even the Puritan settlers who did not venture out onto the frontier on their own. In short, as Slotkin brilliantly demonstrates, the very understandings of the meaning of life and the degree of repression applied within the Puritan communities was critically shaped by the lure of the land. More than this, however, the leader's need to hold the communities together shaped their attitudes and treatment of their native American neighbors (and, in consequence, visa versa).

The remarkable stories of the original white settlers in communities such as Jamestown and Plymouth Rock are well known to every school child in America today. Less well known is the story of the millions of colonists of North America's 17^th and 18^th centuries. To be sure, life was in many ways difficult, but after the original beachhead communities were established the life prospects and economic opportunities for the colonists were quite different from the those of the early 1600's.⁽³⁾ Most eighteenth century white Americans were remarkably well off. Certainly, the colonists were not rich by any modern American standard, but of course to apply such a standard to the early 1800's would be absurd. How did the standard of living of the Americans compare with that of their European counterparts? Reliable and precise comparative income data is, unfortunately, difficult to attain. But by every measure I can find, Americans were substantially better off than their European brethren. Not only were Americans better fed and housed than most Europeans at the time⁽⁴⁾ they were, significantly, radically more likely to become property owners.

This last point cannot be over-stressed. Colonial Americans had economic prospects which looked quite different from those of their European brethren. This was because of the enormous amounts of land available to them and to their children. Expectations about the future are fundamentally shaped by the economic realities in which we live. As Geertz has shown, beliefs are not disconnected from reality. Instead they are rooted in real life experiences and confirmed or disconfirmed by these experiences. In the real world of Colonial Americans, virtually any white male could reasonably expect to become a landowner if he was willing to move and take the sometimes substantial risks.

The pioneer, therefore, was able to obtain land easily. It is true that first property required more cash than most settlers possessed, and that where speculators were permitted to engross large tracts the farmer had to pay the profit. Sporadic complaints indicated some dissatisfaction, but these were few enough to prove that the difficulty was not serious. Thus hardworking settlers with little of no money could acquire land and survive even though they may not have cash income for many years (Main, 1965:10).

The availability of land also drew more and more people to the North American continent⁽⁵⁾

(See Table 1). One might remember that population growth was considered a crisis in England at the time (recall Malthus' dire predictions). But in the colonies, population growth was not only acceptable, it was encouraged.⁽⁶⁾ An expanding population was thought desirable for a variety of reasons, but underlying all these was the basic fact of the enormous stretches of land just west of current settlements. In fact, the colonies competed with each other for new immigrants. "Easy attitudes toward squatting, gifts of land, sales with payments deferred - all bespoke the need for people. And bespoke, too, the other half of the equation -- the existence of a vast domain. Fundamentally, it was the favorable land-man ratio that made possible in all the colonies a wide distribution of individually owned and privately operated farms" (Bruchey, 1968:25).

In contrast to the economic realities of Europe of the day, and expanding population did not threaten to consume existing resources in North America. Instead, increasing the population offered enormous economic opportunities for those already established in the colonies. Moreover, new communities to the west could act as buffers for existing settlements against Indian attack.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

These figures are impressive to be sure, but what is most significant is probably not simply the rate of increase. Consider instead the economic and social implication of a population explosion of this order. While most Americans think today of the Puritans of the early 1600's when they think of pre-revolutionary America, these data clearly demonstrate both that New Englanders were already a minority by 1770, but also suggest that the Puritans themselves were overwhelmed by the massive migration by mid century. Certainly, many of the hundreds of thousands of colonists who came to the New World in the 18^th century⁽⁷⁾ came for religious reasons, but most evidence points to the fact that the majority came for exactly the same reasons that the tens of millions came in the next century: America was the Land of Milk and Honey. Whereas in England, due to the enclosure movement, peasants were losing the land their families had worked on for generations with little or no recourse or redress, the same peasant could arrive in the America with no money, no title, and no backing and in a few years become a farmer and property owner.

The vast quantities of land also created incentives for established colonists to encourage even more immigration - the more people, the greater the economies of scale and the larger the profits both from trade and from the sale of land (Atack and Passell, 1994:5). North America's generous geography also meant that water transportation was readily available which enabled new colonists to bring their surplus product to market at very reasonable costs without heavy public investment in infrastructure.. Thus, the Frontier could expand to a remarkable degree without the imposition of heavy taxation upon current residents. Increasingly, the colonies developed economies dependent upon the continued flow of new peoples to the western frontier and the continued access to land on that frontier.

Finally, as Main's careful analysis demonstrates, the availability of land, the rapid expansion of the economy and the booming population also contributed to a social structure quite unfamiliar in the Old World.

Crucially important to the early American was his ability to improve his economic and social position. Comparisons with other societies are dangerous when there are no comparable facts, but the evidence points decisively toward a much higher degree of mobility in revolutionary America had been usual elsewhere. One was of course the absence for most Americans of legal or social impediments. All whites were permitted to acquire property, and as they did so they progressed up the social scale... Another factor was the general economic expansion combined with a rapid growth in population. There was always more room at the top (Main, 1965:280).

The New World was indeed the Land of Milk and Honey.
 
 

Societies Dividing

Though we now speak of 'the colonies' as if they were a single unit, of course the reality was far more complex. Each colony was established at different times and under quite different conditions. Still, it is possible to group the colonies into three quite different developmental patterns: New England, Middle Colonies, and the South. Most readers are undoubtedly familiar with the Puritan heritage of New England, the Germanic/Quaker heritage of the middle colonies, and the Slave/Plantation economy of the South. The differences between these three societies is a major part of every high school text on American political development. The oft told story is one of the conflict between the merchants and traders (and even early manufacturing interests) of the North versus the cash crop exporters of the South. What is generally less well understood is the conflicts of interest and values that cut across these three regions. In the pages that follow, I will emphasize the mounting 18^th century conflicts between the established peoples of the eastern regions and the more rural people's of the western regions of each of these colonies. The point is to show that even while there were important differences in each region, there were also common patterns - both in terms of ideology and of interest.

New England's colonial history is perhaps the best known to most readers: Religious based and sometime fanatical communities were given land grants in the early 1600's. Control over the distribution of lands was in the hands of the political/religious leadership and was distributed to the faithful. These communities were founded for the explicit purpose of escaping religious persecution and were deeply fundamentalist, intolerant and fundamentally opposed to the liberalism, licentiousness, and corruption they felt was spreading in England (cf. Shain). Open land was thus a double edged sword. For on the one hand, it could be used to benefit the community, but on the other hand it provided a potential escape from the dictates and repression of the extant leadership.

As Gerring (1998) points out, these communities had much in common with the fundamentalist communities seen in the Middle East today. Just as the religious right of Israel wishes to expand into Palestinian lands, the Puritans wished to expand into Indian lands (Slotkin, 1973). But imagine, if you will, the political consequences for the religious right itself if the arid land of the Middle East was comparable to the fertile soils of New England (and there were few international constraints against their simply absconding this land.) The very hostility of the desert environment itself helps reinforce strong communitarian bonds. In 17^th and 18^th century America, the land itself was not threatening, so an external enemy may have been necessary.⁽⁸⁾

Calvinist also believed that they had a duty to trade and prosper. Their religious doctrine taught them that they could only know if they were of the chosen people if they did indeed prosper and do God's work for the short while that they were here on the earth (Weber). Prospering, meant exploiting the land that God had put before them. Indeed, it was the teachings of at least one Puritan leader that it would be a sin in the eyes of God if the colony did not turn a profit (find cite.)

The John Winthrop's and their fanatical Puritanism were not, however, the only forces at work in New England. In fact, as more and more people populated this region, other ideas and interests also grew in prominence. As these communities developed, they sought to encourage further settlement to the west of their towns. New development had several advantages; towns further on the frontier would effectively protect older settlements from Indian attack.⁽⁹⁾ New developments also brought trade and commerce which enhanced commercial interests in established communities. Finally, immigrants meant more land sales. By mid-1800 land speculation became an important political force in New England.

By the mid-eighteenth century, then, especially with the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars, land was becoming increasingly commodified. Both colonial authorities of existing townships and large landowners took advantage of these boom conditions. The result was to encourage a new kind of settler and, ultimately, a new kind of ethic.... even in New England.

The migratory tendency of New Englanders was increased by this gradual change in its land policy; the attachment to a locality was diminished. The later years showed increasing emphasis by New England upon individual success, greater reliance on the self-made man, who, in the midst of opportunities under competitive conditions, achieved superiority. The old dominance of town settlement, village moral police, and traditional class control gave way slowly... it was this Old West [New England] in the years just before the Revolution, that individualism began to play an important role (Turner, 1996:78).

To be sure, many new immigrants were also deeply religious and willingly followed the dictates of the doctrinal leadership. But, similar to what we see in Israel today, a divide between those who came to the Promised Land for religious purposes and those who simply wished a better life eventually emerged.

Land distribution patterns in the middle colonies were quite different from those of New England. But here too we see the growth of a political rift between established interests and the more rural peoples of the western frontiers. The middle colonies were originally established by a quite different folk, with different purposes in mind in the first place. New York, for example was originally charted for the very purpose of "expansion" or economic exploitation. Pennsylvania, while religious to be sure, was established by Quakers who had the deserved reputation for being tolerant and far more democratic than their Puritan brethren to the north.

In this part of the New World, huge tracts of land were given out to particular individuals (those with political connections). Though estates of this size were not common, several grants exceeded a million acres each. In the 1600's this system of land granting had a relatively chilling effect on exploitation of these lands. This was because the typical pattern was for the large landowner to lease rather than sell his lands. The result was that settlers generally preferred to move to lands where they could own their own property. We must remember, that there was a surplus of land and a deficit of individuals able to occupy it. The competition for settlers eventually led authorities in the middle colonies to sell land to speculators who would then take it upon themselves to attract new settlers. The laws of supply and demand were clearly operative here and soon a system of credits was developed where even penniless laborers were able to buy land on credit and pay the seller back over a number of years.

This system had the effect of creating a large group of quite independent farmers who were force to sell their product on the market in order to pay off their debts. Concomitantly, powerful trading and commercial interests grew in this region. Philadelphia and New York, consequently, expanded much more rapidly than the cities to their north and south. So did their political influence in the colonies generally.
 
 

Source: Bruchey, 1968, p. 20.

The result was one of growing tension between the small farmer and the trader. Here as in other colonies, a powerful, if insipid, conflict over the very social worth of commerce vs farming began to emerge. This was a conflict of more than interest. It was also a struggle over moral value. In rural America (which of course was most of America) farmers often believed that men of Commerce did not share the virtues of men of the land. "To many Americans, the 'Spirit of Commerce' was itself corrupt," colonial historian, Jackson Turner Main tells us. "Its basis was extortion, they asserted and upon such rare occasions when it was found advantageous to the community, it should be strictly regulated. Traders were considered to be of little benefit to the country, and capable of doing infinite mischief... Farmers especially felt that men in commerce comprised a 'set of sharpers, who are constantly on the watch for plunder and gain.... Therefore they cheated the farmers so that they could live a life of pleasure. The farmers believed themselves to be in reality superior to the traders: the mercantile class, they insisted, was the weakest and most dangerous part of the community" (Main, 19654:208). One can scarcely avoid the analogy between these sentiments and what later emerges in the American middle west and west in the under that banner of Populism.

The Southern colonies were, of course, most famous for their great plantations, neo-feudal lifestyles and slavery. As in New England, the desire to protect current establishment from Indian attack led to the expansion of their frontier. But even in the South, those who settled the interior regions tended to be a different folk, with a different set of ideas. The result was the creation of two quite different societies. In the lower lands and tidal basins, land tracts were enormous - in some cases several million acres. But as white men moved upriver somewhat smaller pieces of land become more common. Still, the amount of land available was phenomenal.⁽¹⁰⁾ Out of these frontier types grew a more 'democratic' ideology. "[A] society was already forming of independent yeomen as well as their great planter leaders -- a society naturally expansive, seeing its opportunity to deal in unoccupied lands along the frontier which continually moved toward the West, and in this era of the eighteenth century dominated by the democratic ideal of pioneers rather than by the aristocratic tendencies of the slaveholding planters" (Turner, 1996:94).⁽¹¹⁾

In sum, by the mid 1700's distinctions were growing between the frontiersmen and their more established eastern colleagues in all three economic regions of the New World. To be sure the nature of rural society and the peoples that inhabited it were quite different in each of these three regions. But by the time of the Revolution, both economic interests and common understandings and beliefs about the proper order and structure of society were bifurcating in each region. While most historians and political scientists have focused on the differences in political interest between the various colonies, it may have been the conflicts of interest within each colony that had most to do with defining what kind of nation the United States was to become.

These contests are also intimately connected with the political philosophy of the Revolution and with the development of American democracy. In nearly every colony prior to the Revolution, struggles had been in progress between the party of privilege, chiefly the Eastern men of property allied with English authorities, and the democratic classes, strongest in the West and the cities (Turner, 1996:110-111).⁽¹²⁾

Class in the Colonies

By the mid-1700's, then, the American colonies were becoming more stratified societies. For most New Englanders as well as those of the middle colonies, this trend was most unwanted. Still, the very wealth created through the exploitation of America's riches made this outcome a virtual inevitability. But classes were not evenly distributed across the lands. In the few main cities⁽¹³⁾ there was a class of very wealthy men who made their fortunes in trade, government position, and land sales, as well as a growing and thriving class of artisans, tradesmen and craftsmen.⁽¹⁴⁾ But, as Main points out, outside these cities: "there really was no sharp gap separating the owner of L100 from him who had L200, nor was there a clustering around a given sum. The progression from class to class on the scale of wealth was not by step, but by a ramp; it was a continuous even flow" (Main, 1965:68). In short, what distinguished rural American society, for most of the colonial period from England and Europe was the rather remarkable degree of equality actually found there.⁽¹⁵⁾ This equality, once again, was possible because of the easy access all white colonists had to land. "The typical frontier class structure, however, was 'democratic': most men belonged to the middle class, property was equally distributed , and the poor man found it easy to become a farmer" (Main, 1965:272). There was so much of it that virtually anyone could get land within his means.

The pioneer therefore was able to obtain land easily. It is true that first rate property required more cash than most settlers possessed, and that where speculators were permitted to engross large tracts the farmer had to pay the profit. Sporadic complaints indicated some dissatisfaction, but these were few enough to prove that the difficulty was not serious. Thus hardworking settlers with little or no money could acquire land and survive even though they might not have cash income for many years (Main, 1965:10).

It was typical, for example, for an individual to come to the colonies in the early 1700's as an indentured servant. The common contract would have it that after the five to seven years of service, the servant would be given enough money to begin his own farm. Of course, this was possible because the price of land (on the frontier) was so low. Thomas Jefferson once complained that "We can buy an acre of new land cheaper than we can manure an old acre."

Growing Tensions in the Colonies

Toward the middle of the century, American society and social structure was developing in two opposing directions. As a result, colonial America was increasingly a place of paradoxes. As the 18^th century matured, an aristocratic class - with all its airs and pretensions - was developing, especially in the cities and on the larger farms of Virginia and the South. Perhaps in part because the colonial elite could never be truly accepted back in Europe, no matter how hard they tried, American elites were caught between the desire to distinguish themselves from the common folk and their understanding that they too were simply common folk (CITE, CITE)

At the same time, rural America and especially the frontier was becoming increasingly egalitarian - both in terms of land ownership (which was close to universal) and in social attitudes and beliefs.⁽¹⁶⁾ Class distinctions, no matter how much the elite wished to draw them, were difficult to maintain in a society as mobile and flexible as the New World had become. Virtually anyone who wished to change his circumstances had good opportunity to do so simply by moving west. By the end of the eighteenth century, it was commonly noted that the typical western farmer had moved several times in his adult life. (FIND QUOTE OR TWO HERE). Geographic mobility ultimately affected social mobility and thereby altered norms of deference among the colonialists. For example, the use of titles as means of marking men of distinction declined in revolutionary America. It came to the point where a simple farmer or artisan could claim the title of 'Mr.'... "without exciting comment, might become a 'gentleman,' and could aspire to the 'esquire' as he increased in wealth and local prestige....The sequence: no title - Mr., Gent., Esq., Hon., - did represent a prestige order which corresponded roughly with the economic rank order, but it was flexible rather than rigid, and instead of symbolizing and reinforcing a series of levels, each separated by a visible gap difficult to bridge, it rather marked the gradual upward progress of the mobile American in an open society" (Main, 1965:218-19). To say the least, these tendencies infuriated the upper class [Quote, Quote].

Once again, we must remember that American elites themselves could not gain access to the status of the European elite. As a consequence, they themselves held ambiguous attitudes toward equality. On the one hand they believed and often spouted the rhetoric of the equality of opportunity and even argued that inequality was destructive of "public virtue." But at the same time, they were far from convinced the "meaner sort" should have equal standing to those of education and means.[PUT IN A COUPLE OF JUICY QUOTES HERE] Indeed, the elite was exceptionally protective of their privilege.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the peculiarities of social development in the New World had created an extraordinary society, remarkably equal yet simultaneously unequal, a society so contradictory in its nature that it left contemporaries puzzled and later historians divided. It was, as many observers noted, a society strangely in conflict with itself. On the one hand, social distinctions and symbols of status were highly respected and intensely coveted, indeed said one witness, even more greedily than the English themselves.... Yet, on the other hand, Americans found all of these displays of superiority of status particularly detestable, in fact, 'more odious than in any other country.'" (Wood, 1969:73-4)⁽¹⁷⁾

To sum up the argument at this point: Well before the American Revolution, the North American colonies had become quite different societies from the more structured polities of Europe. To be sure, very similar tensions - both in terms of ideas and interests - were evident in both Europe and America: entrepreneurs vs. farmers, traditionalists vs. liberals, etc.. Indeed, it is fair to say that none of the ideas which were eventually championed in the American Revolution were home grown. But, it is equally clear that these ideas found more fertile soil in North America than they did Europe of the day. This was critically because of the radically different geographic context found on the New World. For example, whereas only XX percent of British male citizens were landowners, in America XX percent had their own land and virtually all the rest could expect to own land if they chose to.

In short, reality differed in America. This differing reality favored some beliefs and disconfirmed others. People were in fact more equal had much greater control over their own fates. Unsurprisingly, egalitarian beliefs prospered.
 
 
 
 

A Political Economy of the American Revolution

The popular interpretation of the origins of the American Revolution continually reinforced in the media and by our current political rhetoric is that the Revolutionaries were a united and massively popular force who represented a social consensus to break away from the oppressive rule of England in favor of a democratic, liberal and free society. This interpretation is wrong.

What became the American Revolution did not, of course, begin as a Revolution at all. It is not even true that a majority of Americans actually supported or participated in the Revolution as a revolution. Wright, (1975) for example estimates that about 1/3 of colonialists "were definitely in favor of independence", 1/3 were loyalists and 1/3 were neutral. Rather than an intentional mass revolution organized to separate the colonies from the mother country, the Revolution began as a revolt against a set of onerous policies imposed by a distant but legitimate government on her subjects. Partially due to the particular and inappropriate reactions of the British government to the revolt (see below) it soon took on a life of its own. It developed into a Revolution to which organizers brought a rhetoric that could appeal to colonists and mobilize them into a broader struggle.

The revolutionaries were hardly unified behind a singular ideal or interest. We too easily reinterpret rhetoric used during the revolutionary period into modern usage, and thus too easily miss the very conflict over the ideas which ultimately came to be rallying cries for the Revolutionaries. "Liberty," for example, as it was commonly understood in the 1770's had little to do with our modern day notions of individual rights. As Shain (1994) convincingly demonstrates, for New Englanders at least, this was a revolt against the insipid materialism of Britain and was instead a much more communitarian and localist rebellion motivated by Protestant ideology. The emphasis was not on "Freedom" and "Liberty" in the modern senses of these terms, but on a deeply religious, agriculturalist and even collectivist ideology. These Americans were often quite upset that Britain was, in their view, losing touch with its own principles. Rather than a revolt intended to bring in a New World which would maximize individual freedoms and personal liberties, what became the American revolution "came to represent a final attempt, perhaps - given the nature of American society - even a desperate attempt, by many Americans to realize the traditional Commonwealth ideal of a corporate society in which the common good would be the only objective of government" (Wood, 1969:54) "A growth of wealth and luxury after 1763," writes Pauline Maier in agreement with Wood, suggested that Americans were not the equalitarian, Spartan, public-minded "virtuous" people portrayed by many eighteenth-century European writers. "The cause of moral decay lay, many colonists concluded, in a contagion of corruption spreading from England to her colonies. If therefore the Americans were to be 'the kind of people they wanted to be' - if they were to resolve the 'profound doubts' raised by their 'introspective probings' - they had to 'become free of Britain.' Indeed, what 'in the last analysis drove them into revolution in 1776' was a 'pervasive fear that they were not predestined to be a virtuous and egalitarian people.'" (Maier, 1987:584-5).

But the American revolution was also about raw self interest. For some, the complaint was simply against British policies which were constraining the commercial ambitions of many colonists. For these people, at least, the revolt was not intended to be a revolution against the British society, it was simply an argument against British rule. It was the opposition to unfair trading practices, resentment for onerous taxation and most importantly, the British decision to close the American frontier, that tipped the scales for many in their fight with the British.

From Revolt to Revolution

In many ways it can be said that the beginning of the conflict between Britain and her American colonies began when a 21 year old officer from Virginia named George Washington led an ill-fated expedition on behalf of the Governor of Virginia to secure the lands of the upper Ohio Valley. After a small attack on the French fort at Duquesne, in what was then part of New France, Washington retreated to a hastily constructed stockade called Fort Necessity, but was soon captured and humiliated. The French, and their Native American allies understood full well, however, that this attack would not be the last incursion of the British colonies into lands that they felt were their own.⁽¹⁸⁾ Later that summer, about 200 French soldiers and 600 Indians led an attack on a force of over 1,400 British soldiers in an attempt to settle the land dispute once and for all. Though the British were slaughtered (approximately 2/3 were killed or injured) the longer run effect was to open up a war between the French and Indians on the one side and the British and their colonists on the other.

In 1759 the Iroquois apparently decided the tides were turning and switched sides in favor of the British. In a few short months following this turnabout the British marched north into Canada and eventually conquered Quebec, the capital city of New France. The War was soon over and in 1763 the French signed the Treaty of Paris yielding their claim to all lands in North America.

Perhaps surprisingly, victory over the French ultimately contributed to growing hostilities between Britain and her American colonies. First, rather than settling the disputes over land in North America, the British victory over this domain dramatically exacerbate tensions.

There can be no doubt from the Colonial point of view, that this was a war for land. Ironically, victory did not give them what they wanted. Instead, it revealed real conflicts in interest between the British the Americans.

Soon after the war, the British realized that in gaining the rights to all French lands they were actually saddling themselves with an enormous administrative burden. The war itself had cost the British Treasury dearly and now there were these new lands to control. The financial costs were enormous, and made all the more difficult by the fact that the American colonists were increasingly unwilling to shoulder their fair share of the burden of protecting their own frontier. Indeed this problem was further exacerbated by the fact that the colonists were continually moving into Indian lands and thus provoking the Indians to attack their new settlements. British soldiers, of course, were then asked to come to the rescue.

The British thus imposed what they thought to be two quite reasonable solutions to this problem. First, they imposed the Proclamation of 1763 thus declaring all lands east of the Appalachian mountains "Indian Lands" and prohibiting further colonial expansion into these areas. Secondly, they introduced a series of revenue raising measures (The Stamp Act, The Sugar Act etc.) which were meant to force the colonialists to help pay for their own defense. Per Capita tax burdens were radically lower in the colonies than in Britain at the time and thus is seemed only reasonable to raise more money from the increasingly rich colonists⁽¹⁹⁾. Though reasonable to the British, these measures were intolerable to the Americans.

Of several measures that contributed to the growing tensions, the significance of the Proclamation of 1763 is often underestimated. It may seem surprising to us today, but on the eve of the revolution, land was perceived to be in decreasing supply. "Many towns were becoming 'crowded' with waste land turned to crops and the cost of land soaring" (Lockridge, 1968:69). Both increasing immigration to the colonies and the continued growth of large families meant that land holdings in established villages and town were decreasing in size. "In terms of the future, in terms of the sons of these American farmers and of the amount of land which each son could hope to inherit, America was no longer the land of opportunity" (Lockridge, 1968:71) "Somebody said that the young colonists had seen a vision through a door that they had prized open," said Alistair Cook in his documentary on America. But with the Proclamation the British, "slammed it in their faces."

Another important consequence of the French and Indian War was the way in which it contributed to tensions between the British and the colonists at the social level. The British elite officers felt that the Americans were disorganized and uncultured: The fact that they needed to have the British to "save" them certainly contributed to this conviction. The Americans, for their part, saw the British soldiers (who mostly came from the lower classes in England) as rude, licentious and even immoral. Colonial soldiers were, for the most part, relatively well off farmers and viewed the British foot soldiers with great disdain. Thus, while the British elite was evermore convinced of their superiority, the Americans became convinced that the British had lost their moral virtue. The New World, the Americans came to believe, held special virtues that the English could no longer command.

Importantly, the perception of the increasing density in the established parts of America, also led to the fear that society might become even more stratified. This frightened America's revolutionary leaders. They feared that if they ran out of land, they too might lose their moral superiority. Whereas up to that point America was a land of mostly propertied men, increasingly a class of propertyless laborers was growing.⁽²⁰⁾

That society was certainly not as stratified, oppressive and corrupt as the society of England had become, but it seemed to some men that it was moving in that direction. The fear of a gradual "Europeanization" of American society, a fear given ground by the tendencies outlined here, probably lent special energy to their revolutionary rhetoric. Thus, the leaders of the Revolution adopted Enlightenment ideas with such speed and fervor not merely because these ideas described the egalitarian, 'middle class' society which was the distinctive feature of life in the American colonies, but also because independence and the reform engendered by Enlightenment ideas would guarantee that happy society against the changes which even then were bringing it closer to the Old World model (Lockridge, 1968:76-77).

Thus, the drawing of the Proclamation Line in 1763 (the same year of the Treaty of Paris) was an affront to the economic ambitions of many Americans and a threat to the moral structure of American society. The various revenue acts imposed in this decade further exacerbated tensions in that the Americans were clearly not being treated as equal citizens under the British crown. This proved especially hard to swallow as they increasingly came to believe that it was the Americans and not the British who were the real paragons of civic and moral virtue.

Common Sense and the American Revolution

I will not detail here the well known history of the Revolutionary struggle itself. By the time shots were finally fired at Lexington in 1775 the British and the colonists had already been in a duel of wills for over a decade. During this decade the British made many a blunder⁽²¹⁾, to be sure. But even so, it took powerful rhetoric to mobilize a Revolution.⁽²²⁾ One of the most potent rhetorical forces during the Revolution was the short pamphlet written by the recent immigrant from England, Thomas Paine. In his, Common Sense, Paine offered a direct attack on government by kings and noblemen. Written in very plain language, Paine's pamphlet sold over 150,000 copies - one for every eight adult white males in the colonies. Obviously impressed by the virtue of the American independent and property owning masses he wrote, "Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived."

Even the Declaration of Independence was in many ways a rhetorical document intended to mobilize colonists to the revolutionary cause. Like Paine's popular volume, Jefferson's manifesto, spoke to themes now becoming increasingly familiar and attractive in the New World - most importantly that "all men are created equal" and from this one must draw the conclusion that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."

These were radical ideas indeed. But one should not overstate their uniqueness. These ideas and concepts were increasingly gaining currency among the property holders in Britain as well. What was critically different, of course, was that only a tiny fraction of British subjects were property owners, thus the idea that common folk should gain rights of citizenship was as foreign as the idea the women could participate. In America, however, property was widely dispersed and, as pointed out above, the cliffs between various ranks in society were far less dramatic than they were in England at the time. There is little evidence to suggest that elites like Jefferson or Samuel Adams ever meant to suggest anything like universal manhood suffrage. But they did accept and propagandize the idea a legitimate government ruled with the consent of all property holding males. As we shall see below, this "common sense" was taken far too literally by the common man.

The Dysfunctions of Democratic New World

No one expected the colonies to become mass democracies after the War of Independence. In fact, no one really knew what kind of polity they were really fighting for. For most, this was a rebellion against. During the War a loose knit group of representatives from each of the colonies met and convened a Continental Congress in order to help coordinate many of their common issues. This Congress eventually passed a document called the "Articles of Confederation" in 1781 which established this Congress as a relatively weak legislative body that might help work out common problems. With the conclusion of the War, the Articles of Confederation continued as the single organizing principle for the quite different colonies. Most, believed that the colonies (now States) ought to be the legitimate centers of power. Many even argued, including Thomas Jefferson, against having a permanent national government at all.

So, why did the States eventually abandon the Articles of Confederation in favor of a much stronger national government? The traditional answer, of course, is the Confederation was too weak. For example, without the power to tax, it was left to beg the states for revenues to pay off the war debts. In addition all states were given a single vote in Congress and a 9 vote majority was required to pass any legislation. But this answer begs the question. What, as Jefferson at first argued, was wrong with having a weak national government (or none at all)?

The answer to this question, it appears, has much less to do with the weakness of the national government and more to do with the strength of the various State governments. According to Gordon Wood, whose book, The Creation of the American Republic,(1969) is widely cited as the most important treatise on the founding period, the state legislatures had become, bluntly, too democratic. State constitutions, often written in the fury of wartime, yielded a great deal of power to the legislatures and, worse yet, often inadvertently allowed these legislatures to be controlled by citizens whom the revolutionary elite often loathed. As Madison pointed out in Federalist 62, the Revolution had allowed government to fall "into the hands of those whose ability or station in life does not entitle them to it." More specifically, "men without reading, experience or principle." The egalitarian and republican rhetoric of the revolution had, it appeared, brought about precisely the maladies James Otis warned against back in 1776. "When the pot boils, the scum will rise to the top." The new country was witnessing a political sea change where men "whose fathers they would have disdained to have sat with the dogs of their flocks" complained one editorialist in Philadelphia, "raised to immense wealth." Or as John Jay would write, "[e]ffontry and arrogance, even in our virtuous and enlightened days, are giving rank and Importance to men whom Wisdom would have left in obscurity."⁽²³⁾

Even during the Revolution, common men began rise to positions of power and authority in the new state governments. "With the elimination of Crown privilege and the appointment, men were prepared to take the republican emphasis on equality seriously. The result, one Baltimore printer declared as early as 1777, was 'Whiggism run mad.' 'When a man, who is only fit to 'patch a shoe' attempts to patch the state... he cannot fail to meet with contempt.'" But, as Wood points out, "contempt was no longer enough to keep such men in their place" (Wood, 1969:476-7).

Wood convincingly shows that the Revolutionary elite was surprised and disappointed with the democratic systems they had unleashed. "For all its emphasis on equality, republicanism was still not considered by most to be incompatible with the conception of a hierarchical society of different gradations and a unitary authority to which deference from lower to higher should be paid... Most Revolutionary leaders clung lightly to the concept of a ruling elite, presumably based on merit, but an elite none-the-less - a natural aristocracy embodied in the eighteenth ideal of an educated and cultivated gentleman." (p.479-80) The 'chaos' which ensued in the states led the very same men that had led the Revolution to a "second revolution." "This was indeed a more desperate revolution, bred from despair and from the sense of impending failure of the earlier revolution; for as Madison put it. 'men of reflection,' were 'much less sanguine as to the new, than despondent as to the present system.'" (Wood, 1969:472)

The result was a fundamental rethinking on the part of America's elite, what Wood calls a "fundamental transformation of [elite] political culture." The egalitarian and republican ideas which they had promoted were now seen as threats to order and invitations to chaos. In other words, the problem with the post revolutionary political system was not simply that it made it difficult to pay back America's revolutionary debts, but also that the wrong kind of political system, increasingly run by the wrong kind of people.

More than anything else, the Federalists' obsession with disorder in American society and politics accounts for the revolutionary nature of the nationalist proposals offered by Madison in 1787 and for the resultant Federalist Constitution.... Only an examination of the Federalists' social perspective, their fears and anxieties about the disarray in American society can fully explain how they conceived of the Constitution as a political devise designed to control the social forces the Revolution had released (Wood, 1969:476).

One should remember the growing resentment for commercial interests and people in rural (ie. majority) American society. All too often state legislatures were dominated by men who did not share the ambition to see the American economy grow. "The conflicting responses to the accelerating commercialism of the American economy shaped much of the argument of constitutional structures, governmental power and the meaning of republican liberty" (Howe, 1987:572, see also Maier, 1987:589).

Brown suggests, further, that it was the commercial men's desire for stable political economy and, most importantly their inability to raise tax revenues that is critical: "The Constitution resulted not so much from threats of disunion and anarchy as from upperclass disillusion with the state governments perceived inability to stand up to rural counter pressures that left Congress crippled, hurt business, and shackled economic investment and growth... Beside national security, the Framers wanted a more hospitable environment for capitalist development both for development's sake and because it would restore the confidence of the propertied classes in republican government" (1993:xi-xii).

Ultimately, a Constitutional Convention was thus called in Philadelphia to help right the wrongs of the new democratic order. Fearing the spread of farmer revolts like the Shays Rebellion of Massachusetts in 1786-7 ever more elites were interested in building a political system that could prevent spiraling chaos as well as better protect their interests against those of lesser means.
 
 

Rethinking the American Republic

It is impossible to understand American society without seeing the formative influence of the Constitution upon it.(Diamond, 1981:99)

The delegates from the 12 ex-colonies represented at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 were institutionalists. They believed that the institutional arrangements of a new union (if there was to be a union) would determine more than what kinds of interests would be advantaged or disadvantaged, but ultimately also what kind of society America should become. Martin Diamond eloquent analysis of the thinking behind the construction of the U.S. Constitution tells us the following: The word 'constitution' "derives from the Latin statuere which means to 'set up' in the sense of giving a thing its essential and peculiar nature... In the ancient tradition, a constitution establishes the fundamental nature or genius of a political system; that is, a constitution is a people's way of life. Thus it consists in the human ends towards which a particular system strives, both by virtue of its positive arrangements as well as by virtue of limits placed upon its rulers... And in these ways it shapes the very being of the society and forms the kinds of human beings who live there" (Diamond, 1981:99)⁽²⁴⁾.

But what, exactly, were these men wishing to accomplish? This question invokes a long and deep debate in American historiography. The debate between those who saw the Federalists as essentially property owners and holders of securities in a conspiracy against small farmers and debtors (Beard, etc.) and those who saw them instead as great political visionaries attempting to build a viable liberal democratic state (Diamond, etc.). The most persuasive analyses, in my reading at least, are those that have eschewed a unicausal model. To understand the eventual document agreed to in Philadelphia after several long hot summer months one needs to appreciate that both ideas and interests were at work.

Calvin Jillson (1992) presents one of the more interesting and persuasive analyses of these politics. In his careful analysis of the formal record as well as the notes and letters written by the participants at the Convention he argues that there were actually two levels of "constitution making" taking place that summer: One was about abstract principles and broad issues regime design. The other, "lower level" decisions were ones which might have direct impact on the individual and/or his regional/economic interests. In this 'higher level' debate, the participants simply were unable to calculate their personal or regional interests. Issues like whether the Congress should be unicameral or bicameral; whether its members should be selected by the state legislatures or by the people. "These questions and others dealing with broad issues of regime design could not be determined by the specific economic status or social characteristics of the individual delegates. Rather, they were determined by the delegates' general assumptions about how human nature was likely to interact with alternative political structures to create a good social order" (Jillson, 1992:311-12).

The "lower level" of constitution making concerned issues like the distribution of future political power (ie. number of seats in the Senate for large vs small states), and economic benefits concerning issues such as control over western lands, commerce and slavery. "The key fact about each of these issues is that they had a straightforward, immediately evident, distributive character about them. Therefore, questions at this level were commonly decided with direct reference to the political, economic, and social characteristics of the individual delegates, their states, or their regions, rather than to more general principles" (Jillson, 1992:312)..

Jillson suggests that James Madison, in particular, understood the difference between these two kinds of institutional rules and worked hard to keep the discussion on the broad principles first and then allowed the debate to move to the "lower level" discussions later in the summer. His strategy was to get agreement on broad structural agreements first, where delegates "simply could not see clearly what different choices... would make to them as individuals, to their states or their regions. Therefore, they had no alternative but to base their decisions on their own regionally distinct beliefs - regarding the more diffuse and general interests of the community and the nature, role, and purpose of national political institutions" (Jillson, 1992:312, emphasis added).

The men from each of the three regions represented different subcultures in American society and thus held differing views over what was wrong with the Articles and what kind of system would be best. New Englanders saw their society as divided between the recently embolden republicans and commercial interests. The Shays Rebellion was paramount in their minds. They saw a stronger national government as a way to stabilize state and local politics. The Southerners at the Convention represented the landed gentry of their world and were also fearful of the increasingly democratic voices which had grown out of the Revolution. "Southern purposes, however, were different from those of the New England delegates. Where the New England delegates sought to stabilize local democracies, the southern delegates sought to insulate local aristocracies". Finally, the representatives from the middle colonies "represented no uniform social or economic character, they had, as a direct result of their diversity, a distinctive political style that anticipated the full development of American pluralism" (Jillson, 1992:309).

Given this diversity of interests and views (republican vs elitist, commercial vs agricultural, slave holder vs Puritan, large state vs small etc. etc.) it does seem remarkable that these men could find an institutional compromise at all. But focusing on their differences, as most Constitutional scholars are want to do, misses a very basic commonality: The desire to continue the exploitation of the vast American resources. A national government was necessary for the successful exploitation of the frontier. In fact, absent stronger national government, conflicts over who was to control western lands proved to be some of the most difficult issues faced by the States at this point. It is significant to note that the Northwest Ordinance was passed by the Continental Congress on July 13, 1787 - in other words exactly at the time that the Constitutional Convention was meeting⁽²⁵⁾. The point here is that, one of the very few things that the Confederation could agree on, was their common interest in the expansion of the American frontier. With the Northwest Ordinance the boundaries of the United States expanded from the Appalachian mountains all the way to the Mississippi.

More land, was desirable from several perspectives: For the Republicans, a good society and a healthy democracy depended upon the majority of citizens being property owners. Given the continued population explosion ongoing in the New World, new lands were essential else America become ever more stratified and conflictual. For commercial interests, bankers and traders, the ability to exploit more land was self-evidently attractive. Finally, for the political elite- frightened by the democratic forces unleashed by the Revolution - a larger polity would necessarily narrow the political funnel making it more difficult for those of lesser education, background and status to achieve political prominence and influence. James Madison, the great institutionalist thinker, specifically argued: "The only remedy" to the dangers of democracy, "is to enlarge the sphere... as far as the nature of Government would admit... This [is] the only defense against the inconveniences of democracy consistent with the democratic form of Government" (cited in Jillson, 1992:320). In Federalist #39 he later argued: "In a large Society, the people are broken into so many interests and parties, that a common sentiment is less likely to be felt, and the requisite concert less likely to be formed by a majority of the whole." In short, the dangerous potential of the masses organizing against the wealthy, which is inherent to democratic government, could be mitigated by the physical expansion of that democracy. "In future times," Madison warned his colleagues in Philadelphia "a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of property."

Madison arguments thus acknowledged two basic points: First, that the base and most intractable conflicts in society are those between the propertied and the propertyless. Secondly, that up to that point in American history the fact was a majority of white male American did own property. Thus a certain type of politics was now possible. But sooner or later, the free land would run out and would thus bring a new political economy to America. A stronger National government was thus necessary, this logic followed, both to help expand the frontier and ultimately to protect the have's from the have nots.

One of the major institutional conflicts at the convention - the question of whether the executive should be independent or dependent on the legislature - hinged precisely on the question of strong vs. weaker national government. Localists and democrats, fearing that the national government might become too strong argued that the executive should be selected by the legislature.⁽²⁶⁾ Nationalists believed that the executive should have strong independent authority precisely to add another check to the egalitarian temptations in a democratic legislature.

America Becomes Less Democratic

It is one thing to show how and why 55 men in Philadelphia could reach a compromise over the new institutions of government, it is yet another to explain why these new institutions were accepted in the states as the new law of the land. This is especially so, if we appreciate the "[t]he essential truth," as pointed out by Richard Henry Lee was that the Constitution was, "a transfer of power from the many to the few" (cited in Countryman, 1987:559). Or as Gordon Wood puts it: "All of the Federalists' desires to establish a strong and respectable nation in the world, all of their plans to create a flourishing commercial sector, in short, all of what the Federalists' wanted out of the new central government seemed in the final analysis dependent upon the pre-requisite maintenance of aristocratic politics" (Wood: 1969:492).

There were obvious advantages for commercial interests in America in the stronger national institutions agreed to in Philadelphia. The new Federal system: 1) Created a larger market (allowing for regional specialization and larger scale production). 2) National coining of money would mean greater security against inflation and "paper money" as demanded by rural debtors. 3) It unified bankruptcy laws and property rights law into a singular national code. 4) It enabled a national postal system thereby facilitating interstate commerce. 5) It enabled a national militia which could be useful in the event of future 'Shay's Rebellions. Finally, 6) the new Federal government (partially through the sale of western lands) would be able to pay the national debt.⁽²⁷⁾

The powers given to Congress and the ones denied to the states are evidence enough [of who the main economic beneficiaries of the Constitution were]. By creating a common market, a national system of taxation and finance, a common money system a communications network, by granting legally enforceable property rights to inventors and authors.... the Constitution created a legal environment far more favorable to entrepreneurial values than anything America had known. Where in any of the original state constitutions is there a comparable list of permissions and prohibitions? (Countryman, 1987:560)

But the change in attitudes with the Articles on the part of the economic and intellectual elite of America was more than simply a recalibration of their interests. To be sure, part of the motivation for the perceived need for reform can be interpreted in the pursuit of self-interest and articulated in game theoretic logic: That is, these men understood that they had miscalculated the economic effects of the institutions they had earlier constructed. Thus, given new information (experience) they recalculated and worked to institutionalize a new equilibrium. But such an interpretation misses important parts of the actual story. According to the accounts of virtually all modern historians of the era, the Founding Fathers were also deeply disappointed in behavioral and attitudinal outcomes the new democratic institutions appeared to engender. They were also genuinely interested in promoting "public virtue."

In the mid-eighteenth century 'faculty psychology' was very popular amongst the learned elite. According to this theory, human beings could be influenced by the environment in which they lived. In other words, human nature could be improved. Given proper incentives and constraints, the lower faculties (passions) could be held in check by the higher faculties (reason and conscience). These elites were disappointed by the fact that the lower faculties increasingly seemed to dominate men in the immediate post-revolutionary era. "By the time of the Constitutional Convention, the Framers had become convinced that communal self-abnegation and austerity were not part of the American character," as they had earlier thought that it would be (Brown, 1993:156). They were particularly disappointed with the state governments because they allowed people to become "luxurious and licentious." In many of these elites view the demoralization of the common folk as a product of their leaders not imposing proper discipline in society. Thus part of the call for a stronger central government was a call for a government more removed from the people because such a government could impose greater discipline and thus help build better character among the people (Brown, 1993:161-2).

The dominant philosophical assumptions about human nature in both Britain and America at the time were essential Hobbesian, many Americans had come to believe that they were 'better' than their brothers across the sea. As we saw above, American were deeply disappointed with the character of the British who had come defend them in the French and Indian Wars. Their experiences during the war tended to reinforce their religious beliefs that they were themselves the chosen people. "'We have probably,' wrote Washington with emphasis, 'had too good an opinion of human nature in forming our confederation.'" (cited in Wood, 1969:472)

Thus, the new evidence, that Americans were becoming less virtuous, was reason enough to rethink the institutions that framed their behavior. Historian Pauline Maier, reiterating Wood's argument, tells us, "[W]hen in the 1780s, new evidence of luxury and selfishness indicated that Americans lacked virtue even under independent republican institutions, the result was a crisis 'of the most profound sort,' one concerned with 'the success of the republican experiment itself' [from Wood, 414]. Some persons responded with further efforts for moral reform. Others, who would become Federalists, looked instead to 'mechanical devices and institutional contrivances as the only lasting solution for America's ill.' Their efforts [were] not to reform but to 'manage an unvirtuous people,' an so save the republic" (Maier, 1987:584). In short, the elite's expectations about human behavior in post-revolutionary America were disappointed and thus new institutions were called for. At issue here was not the self interest of this elite, but rather their vision of 'the good society.'

Still, "the quarrel was fundamentally one between aristocracy and democracy" (Wood: 1969:485). Given that the anti-Federalists were in the majority, why did they lose the quarrel? In some measure, the loss was due to the "disingenuous" rhetoric of the Federalists. "Contrary to the implications of its 'We the People' preamble, only some of the people wanted the federal Constitution to become the nation's frame of central government," says historian Michael(?) Brown. "In short, the Federalists needed to bring to bear much energy, resourcefulness, and tactical skill to carry the federal Constitution. That they did so is a classic example of how a determined minority can change the course of history" (Brown, 1993:200).

According to Main, the process appears to have been relatively open to most taxpayers in most colonies.⁽²⁸⁾ Most states worked with a caucus type system familiar in many parts of America today. Still, there were still structural biases favoring local elites. Clearly, economic and social class played a role in the delegate appointment process. First, as in any open democratic forum, those with better education and training have rhetorical advantages over the less well educated. Second, community leaders who had a degree of wealth were commonly called upon to arm and cloth the local militia. This in itself yielded these individuals a degree of status and political positions greater than the men that were being armed. Finally, better off individuals were able to finance the trip to the state conventions, whereas the smaller farmer was less likely to be able to leave his farm for any extended period, even if he had the cash income to pay for the trip.

Another important factor that helps explain the ultimate acceptance of the Constitution was the economic boom experienced immediately after the war. American agricultural products were much in demand in Europe at the same time that the west had been opened with the Northwest Ordinance. Thus, once again the enormous opportunity available to Americans helps explain why they would rather switch than fight (Brown, 1993:234-7). According to Forest McDonald approximately 480,000 of the 640,000 adult males in the colonies at the time did not participate in the process of sending delegates to the state ratifying conventions. "[S]ome of them because of being disenfranchised by law, the vast majority because it was simply too much trouble" [Shain, 1994:5, or McDonald, 1979:319).

That economic power translated into political power should not surprise modern Americans, of course. Thus another factor that clearly played into the Federalists success was their ability to encourage or cajole newspaper editors to support them. Anti-federalists complained that newspaper editors were, 'afraid to offend the great men or Merchants, who could cause them ruin' (Rogers, quoted in Wood). Indeed, out of a hundred or more newspapers printed in the late eighties only a dozen supported the Anti-federalists.

But there was more than a conspiracy going on in the ratification process. The truth is also that while the Federalists were relatively well organized (and financed to be sure) the Anti-federalists were a mixed amalgam of different interests and perspectives. In reality there was no unified Anti-federalist camp. Indeed, there were a large many different reasons and different interests opposed to the Constitution. Organizing and unifying these into a common platform proved impossible. "The Federalist victory," Wood concludes, "it appears, was actually more of an Anti-Federalist defeat" (1969:486).⁽²⁹⁾

Elitist Institutions, Democratic Ideas?

Though politically less powerful and sophisticated than their opponents, the ideas and arguments of the more democratic Anti-Federalists had to be appealed to by the elitists who pressed for the Constitution. The rhetoric and the ideas championed during the war, and often repeated by the Anti-Federalists, continue to carry substantial political weight. This was not simply because a democratic rhetoric would appeal to a broader audience, but also because the elite itself had been in many ways persuaded by these ideas. Now, finding democracy inconvenient, these same men were unwilling to simply abandon what they so recently had championed.⁽³⁰⁾

Diggens, for example, writes:

In effect they [Federalists] appropriated and exploited the language that more rightly belonged to their opponents. The result was the beginning of a hiatus in American politics between ideology and motives that was never again closed. By using the most popular and democratic rhetoric available to explain and justify their aristocratic system, the Federalists helped to foreclosed the development of an American intellectual tradition in which differing ideas of politics would be intimately and genuinely related to differing social interests..... By attempting to confront and retard the thrust of the Revolution with the rhetoric of the Revolution, the Federalists fixed the terms for the future discussion of American politics."

In other words, democratic political rhetoric was used to defend and build support for a more elitists political system and this has now become our institutional and ideational legacies. By the end of the 18^th century, a genuine debate between Burke and Rouseau had been foreclosed in America. Whereas in Europe the Conservatives could and did argue for effective government and the explicit need for an elite to make the tough decisions, in America, Conservatives yielded their argument in order to muster support for their institutions. At the same time, the American democrats won the argument about the equality of man and rule by the people, but defacto conceded the institutional mechanisms that has made it virtually impossible to realize this "Democratic Wish" (Marone).

The particular institutional solution (some say genius) offered by Madison and agreed to by at the Constitutional Convention appealed to both the ideas and the interests emerging in American society: Fragmenting political authority might satisfy the interests of both the established elite and the farmer - that government could not be captured by their opposing interests (whether those of lesser means and education, or the monied interests of the Northeast) who would then use public power to assert their ideas and interests. The republican and egalitarian ideals were appeased through institutional rules assuring multiple points of access and strict limitations on the power of the national government.

'Democratic Governance' has become an oxymoron in America.
 
 

Conclusion

By 1793 the thirteen colonies had agreed to a political union under the new Constitution. As intended, this document sets the institutional stage in which all future American politics are played out. It's political and policy legacy is enormous indeed. I will demonstrate in future chapters, this institutional setting does not define American politics and public policy in a precise way, but it does critically structure both the incentives and constraints facing political actors and would be actors in particular and important ways. The basic and fundamental fragmentation of public authority in American politics does, as Schattschneider and McConnell long ago argued, bias American politics in favor of focused, better organized, and well finance interests. It discriminates against broad, diffuse interests and those who would mobilize in the name of those interests. Our politics has adapted to the institutional structures upon which we battle them. America's relatively meager and peculiar welfare state is in large measure a result of this adaptation.

But the specific institutional design is not the only important legacy built during this founding moment of American history. For certainly, Americans can and did reform and redesign these institutions as the country grew and developed. Another, perhaps equally important legacy was the understanding of political democracy that was forged here: Democratic power was conceived - and has been subsequently framed - as something to be constrained and even feared. Consider for a moment the implications of the first ten amendments which were added even before the document could be passed. Even these amendments - which were necessary to enlist the support of republicans - were cast in the institutional frame of the original document itself. These amendments, and indeed the basic law of the land itself, conceives of power as negative. Why? Because it was understood that the national government would be the domain of a national elite. The stronger these institutions, the weaker the democratic forces in society. Thus, the debate and ultimately American's perception of politics, has also been structured by this institution. It is now commonplace in America to emphasizes the limits of public power rather than the possibilities of community action. And, as we will see in later chapters, "democratic" reformers (most importantly the Progressives) also come to define the public interest in terms of limiting the power of elites who are able to manipulate the fragmented institutions in their direction. The counter-intuitive outcome is that public authority is limited in the name of democratic accountability.

We have reinterpreted the anti-democratic thesis of the Founding Fathers in democratic terms. The result was a democratic polity meant to express the public interest in negative terms. Still today we continue to see democracy in negative terms.... ie. in terms of the government cannot do, rather than what the people can do through their public institutions. In short, the institutional legacy is about ideas as well as interests and incentives.
 
 
 
 

Is this a story simply about interests? Certainly, one reading could formulate the above as a chronicle of cross-cutting cleavages between different interests that resulted in the particular compromises that became the US Constitution. But I think this would be a misreading of this story. Certainly "interest" is a major part of the analysis, but by focusing of the political/economic and geographic situations of the participants I hoped to reveal more than simply how they derived different perceptions of their self interest (cf. Thelen and Steinmo, 1993). Instead, I have argued that a key to understanding the ultimate compromise is rooted in the beliefs of the participants. There were many plausible outcomes; not the least likely of which was that the colonies, eventually the states, would not have come to any agreement on a national government. Certainly, it is also possible that the various elites would have found upon an even less democratically accountable national government. But the later, at least, would have been ruled out not just by the rural farming folk of the American frontier, but an institutional solution of this character would have been ruled out by many of the most important elites in American society as well.

• Ideas are rooted in the real world. They do no float about ready for some articulate political entrepreneur to use them on an unsuspecting and unwilling public. Egalitarian ideas found fertile ground early in America because the American political economy was more egalitarian in fact.

 
• Ideas and culture play a more important role in institutional construction when the direct consequences of various institutional configurations are less than clear. We saw that part of Madison's genius was to get agreement on the "higher level" structures (institutional rules where the particular costs and benefits to individuals or interests were difficult or impossible to calculate) before the Convention moved on to the nitty-gritty where specific interests came into focus. In these "higher level" debates, the participants relied upon their values and beliefs. In the "lower level" discussions, self-interest held the day.

 

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Notes:
1. The basic sketch of my argument here might remind the reader of the work of both Frederick Jackson Turner and of David Potter. I borrow from the ideas and the historiography of these two great historians. I believe that their contributions to our understanding of American history is insufficiently appreciated today for a combination of reasons. Their work have been correctly criticized for providing an overly stylized vision of American culture and for offering arguments which are in fact rather static and certainly oversimplified (cf. Limerick, 1993, 1996). In the following work I intend to offer an analysis which shows the ways in which American institutions and culture have interacted with, changed and developed over time and how the changing nature of the American frontier has effected what America and Americans have become.

2. The history and motivation of the colonialization of Spanish America is outside the scope of this paper.

3. By the early 1700's, for example, per capita income in the colonies was at least $45 per annum (Gallman, 1972). "Conservatively measured, a per capita income of $45 in 1710 would be equivalent to an income of about $550 in 1990, but it might have been worth as much as $900 to $1,000," economic historians Jeremy Atack and Peter Passell point out. " The nine poorest countries today have per capita incomes under $200... In between a quarter and a third of all countries today it is less than $550. [In short] this 1710 income would thus have placed the American colonies ahead of Indonesia [today] (Atack and Passell, 1994:6).

4. One interesting indicator to compare height. During the French and Indian Wars it was routinely noted that colonial soldiers ages twenty-four to thirty five where on average three to four inches taller than their English brethren. "Since the colonists were predominantly English descent, this suggests that accumulated lifetime nutrition for mid-eighteenth century American recruits was far superior to that of English recruits.... More important for the debate at hand, though," note Atack and Passell, "Americans before the Revolution were almost as tall - 68.1 inches on average - as American recruits for World War II.... Americans thus reached modern stature almost two centuries ago." (1994:xvi-xvii).

5. Per capita income grew relatively modestly in the fifty years before the American revolution, but economic output expanded ten fold in these same years. This curious outcome was possible because of the massive population growth the colonies were experiencing at the time.

6. Indeed, Malthus used 18^th century America as evidence for what might happen if population growth were unchecked by war, famine or disease.

7. I have not as of yet been able to find statistics which show the relative share of population growth which can be attributed to immigration vs large families and increasing child survival rates.

8. For greater elaboration of these points see Slotkin, 1973. For an excellent discussion of how the requirements of exploiting the American West of Colorado to California imposed different incentives and limitation on Americans see Limerick, 1993.

9. Our images of Thanksgiving where the Indians and Puritan colonists celebrated together may be accurate for the early years. But by end century, relations grew far more hostile. In the 1800s, for example, the Massachusetts authorities were offering bounties on Indian scalps with different prices for the scalps of men, women and children. (Cf. Turner, cite others, Countryman?).

10. It was decided, for example, by colonial authorities in the early and mid-eighteenth century to create societies or towns of men of not less than twenty fighting men and then allocate them at least 10,000 and not more than 30,000 acres. In other cases, each man was to be granted a half acre to live upon and the right to 200 acres for plantation. In others, the grants were to individuals who were to then attract their own settlers and/or rentiers. In the Shenandoah Valley grants of 1,000 acres were common. Land speculation was the norm.

11. The developmental patterns in the deep south are less clear to me at this point. North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia were all colonized later than Virginia, and the pattern of larger landholding estates was even more prominent. Efforts were made to open the land to smaller farmers to, once again, protect the frontier. But, it appears that the typical pattern along the eastern river valleys was one in which huge tracts of land were granted and the landowner recruited workers to till the land for him. Needless to say, under the conditions of the continued competitive environment for labor in the New World, few independent men and women were willing to stay. This ultimately meant, of course, an increasing demand for slaves and ultimately the creation of a neo-feudal world.

12. In North Carolina, for example, these conflicts rose to the level of rebellion with the Battle of Alamance in May, 1771. Here thousands of western settlers organized a protest group called "The Regulators" and stormed the Courthouse in Hillsboro. Eventually this group was defeated (like the remarkably similar Shays Rebellion of Massachusetts after the Revolution) but its legacy was imprinted both in the fact that many of their demands were implanted into the eventual Constitution of the State of North Carolina.

13. One should note that even by the census of 1790, there were only 5 "cities" in America with populations over 10,000. At the time of the Revolution close to 90% of colonials lived in small rural villages or even further in the frontier.

14. Incomes of the poorest laborers appear to have been somewhat less than 25 pounds sterling a year, whereas judges and treasurers made closer to 300 pounds sterling a year, (Main, 1965:76-7).

15. But, even according to Main, this was not everywhere or always so: Ordinarily the speculator was not a resident, so that no upper class was present, but real property was more than usually concentrated in the hands of large proprietors while the lower class of landless men was more numerous than on most frontiers.

16. In this discussion I have focused on developments in New England and the middle colonies. Certainly, social development as well as land ownership in the South - particularly the far south of the Carolinas and Georgia, was far less egalitarian --once again, even leaving aside the issue of slavery. Interestingly, however, even in the South, these egalitarian pressures seemed to have appeared in the western frontiers, and for remarkably similar reasons. "The class structure of the southern frontier, taken as a whole, possessed that same equality which distinguished most northern pioneer settlements. The proportion of landless whites was much higher in the South, but this seems to have been due not to greater poverty but to a different method of granting , or at all events of occupying, land." (Turner, 1965:49) Social mobility was, however, far more difficult in the South.

17. Nash, suggests that part of the paradox described by Wood lay precisely in the fact that he focused on the elite and its ideas. He suggests that Wood's analysis "did not reflect the attitudes towards equality of a great many farmers, artisans, and laborers, insofar as we can ascertain those attitudes from their own statements of from the words of those who proported to speak for them." (1987:606.)

18. Though Native Americans fought on both sides, most believed that the French were less of a threat to their way of life. The French traders did not seek, in their view, to occupy the lands in the way the British colonists did.

19. See Atack and Passell p.68, for table of comparative tax burdens.

20. There had always been a class of landless laborers in America - perhaps making up nearly a quarter of the population at some times. But these people, interestingly, were not the kind of landless poor we might think of today. Instead they were a temporary poor. Many were the younger sons of large families, some were the indentured servants recently brought over from Europe. But in almost all cases these landless whites were landless for a relatively short period of time. They were in some sense in transit. The easy access to land, either free land, or land offered on credit insured that virtually everyone could get land on the frontier and become a full citizen(interview, Jackson Turner Main)

21. The blunder of the Boston massacre and the subsequent Intolerable Acts imposed upon the Massachusetts Colony which virtually shut colonial rule were of course the final straws that eventually led to the showdown at Lexington.

22. Interestingly, as Atack and Passell point out, out of the 800,000 fighting age men in the colonies at the time of the Revolution, the colonial army was only 20,000 strong and the navy less than 10,000. [Cayton et. al. have written that nearly 200,000 men served on the American side at one time or another during the war..... Sven, find out, what's the truth here.?]

23. Cited in Wood, 1969:477.

24. Daniel Walker Howe argues in The Federalists that the Federalists were influenced by "Faculty Psychology," which suggested that humans were essentially Hobbesian animals, but whose faculties - given proper incentives and constraints - could be brought into check. See also Brown, 1993:161-162.

25. The Northwest Ordinance was actually passed in a series of steps between 1784 and 1787. Each of these steps laid out the rules for bringing in new lands into the United States and then specified the rules for land ownership, town development and ultimately colonization of the enormous resources. The July 13 1878 measure specified that slavery would not be legal North of the Ohio River. Though no direct connection can be proved, this measure was passed in Congress the day before the Constitutional Convention passed the highly controversial 'three-fifths compromise," which counted slaves as three fifths of a person (despite the "all men are created equal" rhetoric) for representation purposes in the House of Representatives. See Countryman, 1985 pp 181-2, 191.

26. Of course, they could not predict that having the executive selected by the legislature led to the undermining of legislatures across the democratic world (Steinmo, 1993; Dodd, ???)

27. See Bruchey (1968) for a more complete list of economic features of the US Constitution.

28. Maryland was a significant exception- stiff property requirements were in force here.

29. See also Beard, 19??, Brown, 1993; J.J. Ellis (cited in Shain); Shain, 1994; McDonald, 1979.

30. Twentieth century cognitive psychology would predict that such an outcome is unlikely. People rarely abandon expressed ideas and preferences with ease. Indeed, such behavior leads to what psychologists call "'Cognitive Dissonance.' "A person does not hold and opinion unless he thinks it correct, and so, psychologically it is not different from a 'knowledge.' The same is true of beliefs, values, or attitudes, which function as 'knowledges' for our purposes." (Festinger, 1957:10). Festinger, a pioneer in this field went on to argue that when there is dissonance between these 'knowledges' and the perceived reality, behavioral change is to be expected. "[D]issonance, that is the existence of non-fitting relations among cognitions, is a motivating factor in its own right. By the term cognition, here... I mean any knowledge, opinion or belief about the environment, about oneself, or about one's behavior. Cognitive dissonance can e sen as an antecedant condition which leads to activity oriented dissonance reduction just as hunger leads to activity oriented towards hunger reduction" (1957:3).

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