Far from being the traitors or aristocrats alleged by their opponents, the Federalists showed that they too had inherited the ideology of the Revolution, but only that they took from it different political lessons. Through a series of eighty-five Federalist Papers (written as newspaper articles by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay under the pseudonym Publius), they demonstrated the depth and sophistication of their political philosophy.81 Hamilton, ever the republican centralist, saw the Constitution as a way to foster a vigorous centralized republic (not a democracy) that would simultaneously promote order and economic liberty in the Lockean tradition.
Madison emerged as the most significant of the three Federalist Papers authors in one respect: he correctly analyzed the necessity of political parties (“factions,” as he called them) and understood their role. An extensive republic, especially one as large as the United States would become, inevitably would divide society into a “greater variety of interests, of pursuits, of passions, which check each other.” Factions, then, should be encouraged. They provided the competition that tested and refined ideas. More important, they demanded that people inform themselves and take a side, rather than sliding listlessly into murky situations they did not choose to understand out of laziness.
Modern Americans are assaulted by misguided calls for “bipartisanship,” a code word for one side ceding its ideas to the party favored by the media. In fact, however, Madison detested compromise that involved abandoning principles, and in any event, thought that the Republic was best served when factions presented extreme differences to the voters, rather than shading their positions toward the middle. The modern moderate voters—so highly praised in the media—would have been anathema to Madison, who wanted people to take sides as a means of creating checks and balances.
His emphasis on factions had another highly practical purpose that, again, reflected on his fundamental distrust of human nature; namely, factions splintered power among groups so that no group dominated others. Like Hamilton then, and later Tocqueville and Thoreau, Madison dreaded the “tyranny of the majority,” and feared that mobs could just as easily destroy personal rights as could any monarch. Madison demanded an intellectual contest of ideas, and recognized that the Constitution’s separation of powers only represented one layer of protections against despotism. The vigorous competition of political parties constituted a much more important safeguard.82
Hamilton shared Madison’s dark view of human nature, but where Madison stressed personal liberties, Hamilton thought more in terms of the national interest and the dangers posed by the Articles. Portrayed as more radical than Madison—one author referred to Hamilton as the Rousseau of the Right—the New Yorker has often been viewed as a voice for elitism. In fact, Hamilton sought the alliance of government with elites because they needed to be enlisted in the service of the government on behalf of the people, a course they would not take if left to their own devices. To accomplish that, he intended to use the Treasury of the new republic, and its financial/debt structure, to encourage the wealthy to align themselves with the interests of the nation.83
Only the wealthy could play that role: middle-class merchants, farmers, or artisans were too transient and, at any rate, did not have enough surplus to invest in the nation. Permanent stability required near-perpetual investment, which in turn required structuring property laws so that the wealthy would not hesitate to place their resources at the disposal of the government. Hamilton also argued that the new government would thrive once the “power of the sword” (a standing army) was established, opening the door for his detractors to label him both a militarist and a monarchist, whereas in reality he was a pragmatist.
Taken together, the ideas of Madison and Hamilton further divided power, and when laid atop the already decentralized and balanced branches, added still more safeguards to the system of multiple levels of voting restrictions, staggered elections, and an informed populace—all of which provided a near-impenetrable shield of republican democracy. Laminating this shield, and hardening it still further, was the added security of religious conviction and righteousness that would not only keep elected and appointed officials in line on a personal level, but would infuse the voting public with a morality regarding all issues. At least, this was the plan, as devised by the Federalist Founders.
State after state cast votes, and the Federalists advanced to a dramatic victory. Five states—Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut—ratified the Constitution within three months of first viewing the document. Anti-Federalists claimed the voters had not been given enough time to debate and assess the proposal, but the Federalists brushed away their objections and the Constitution sailed through. The process slowed in Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Virginia. In those states, Anti-Federalist majorities attacked the documents, but the Federalists answered them point by point.
As the spring and summer of 1788 wore on, the Anti-Federalist cause gradually lost support. In some states, tacit and written agreements between the factions traded Anti-Federalist support for a written bill of rights. New Hampshire’s June twenty-first ratification technically made the Constitution official, although no one was comfortable treating it as such until New York and Virginia had weighed in. Washington helped swing Virginia, stating flatly that “there is no alternative between the adoption of [the Constitution] and anarchy,” and “it or disunion is before us to choose from.”84 Virginia, thanks to Washington’s efforts, ratified on June twenty-fifth, and New York followed a month later. Despite North Carolina’s and Rhode Island’s opposition, the Constitution became the “law of the land.”85 The Constitution was “a Trojan horse of radical social and economic transformation,” placing once and for all the principles espoused by Jefferson in the Declaration into a formal code whose intent was usually, though not always, obvious.86
The Anti-Federalist Legacy
Given the benefit of hindsight, it is remarkable that the Anti-Federalists fared as well as they did. They lost the battle, but not the war. In 1787–88, the Anti-Federalists lacked the economic resources, organizational skill, and political vision to win a national struggle. Nor did they have the media of the day: of one hundred Revolutionary newspapers, eighty-eight were solidly in the Federalist camp. This proved advantageous when Virginians read false Federalist newspaper reports that New York had ratified on the eve of their own state’s narrow vote! Moreover, Franklin, Jay, Hamilton, John Marshall, and General Washington himself—the cream of Revolutionary society—all backed the Constitution and worked for its ratification. On the other hand, the Anti-Federalists were lesser-known men who were either aged or less politically active at the time (for example, Sam Adams, George Mason, and Patrick Henry) or young and just getting started in their political careers (James Monroe and John Randolph).
And, ironically, the Anti-Federalists’ love of localism and states’ rights sealed their fate. This first national political election demanded a national campaign organization and strategy—the kind that typifies our own two-party system in the present day. Anti-Federalists, though, tended to cling to local allegiances; they were fearful of outsiders and ill equipped to compete on a national stage. To their credit, when they lost, they grudgingly joined the victors in governing the new nation.87 Yet the Anti-Federalists’ radicalism did not disappear after 1788. Instead, they shifted their field of battle to a strategy of retaining local sovereignty through a philosophy constitutional historians call strict construction. This was an application of the narrowest possible interpretation of the Constitution, and the Anti-Federalists were aided in arriving at strict construction through their greatest legacy, the Bill of Rights.
Following ratification, leaders of both factions agreed to draft amendments to the Constitution.88 Madison took charge of the project that started him on the path on which he soon transformed from a Federalist to an Anti-Federalist leader. Strong precedents existed for a bill of rights. The English Magna Charta, Petition of Right, and Bill of
Rights enumerated, in various ways, protections against standing armies and confiscation of property, and guaranteed a number of legal rights that jointly are referred to as due process. These precedents had taken form in most of the Revolutionary state constitutions, most famously Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, penned by George Mason. Madison studied all of these documents carefully and conferred with Anti-Federalist leaders. He then forged twelve proposed constitutional amendments, which Congress sent to the states in 1789. The states ratified ten of them by 1791.
The First Amendment combined several rights—speech, press, petition, assembly, and religion—into one fundamental law guaranteeing freedom of expression. While obliquely related to religious speech, the clear intent was to protect political speech. This, after all, was what concerned the Anti-Federalists about the power of a national government—that it would suppress dissenting views. The amendment strongly implied, however, that even those incapable of oral speech were protected when they financially supported positions through advertising, political tracts, and broadsides. Or, put simply, money equals speech.
However, the Founders hardly ignored religion, nor did they embrace separation of church and state, a buzz phrase that never appears in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Madison had long been a champion of religious liberty. He attended the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), where he studied under the Reverend John Witherspoon. In May 1776, when Virginia lawmakers wrote the state’s new constitution, Madison changed George Mason’s phrase that “all men should enjoy the fullest toleration” of religion to “all men are entitled to the full and free exercise of religion” [emphasis ours].
Madison thus rejected the notion that the exercise of faith originated with government, while at the same time indicating that he expected a continual and ongoing practice of religious worship. He resisted attempts to insert the name Jesus Christ into the Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty, not because he was an unbeliever, but because he argued that “better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion.” Late in his life Madison wrote, “Belief in a God All Powerful wise and good, is so essential to the moral order of the World and the happiness of man, that arguments to enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources.” Even at the time, though, he considered the widespread agreement within the Constitutional Convention “a miracle” and wrote, “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in [the convention] a finger of that Almighty hand.”89
Religious, and especially Christian, influences in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were so predominant that as late as the mid-twentieth century, the chairman of the Sesquicentennial Commission on the Constitution answered negatively when asked if an atheist could become president: “I maintain that the spirit of the Constitution forbids it. The Constitution prescribes and oath of affirmation…[that] in its essence is a covenant with the people which the President pledges himself to keep with the help of Almighty God.”90 Modern interpretations of the Constitution that prohibit displays of crosses in the name of religious freedom would rightly have been shouted down by the Founders, who intended no such separation.
The Second Amendment addressed Whig fears of a professional standing army by guaranteeing the right of citizens to arm themselves and join militias. Over the years, the militia preface has become thoroughly (and often, deliberately) misinterpreted to imply that the framers intended citizens to be armed only in the context of an army under the authority of the state. In fact, militias were the exact opposite of a state-controlled army: the state militias taken together were expected to serve as a counterweight to the federal army, and the further implication was that citizens were to be as well armed as the government itself!91 The Third Amendment buttressed the right of civilians against the government military by forbidding the quartering (housing) of professional troops in private homes.
Amendments Four through Eight promised due process via reasonable bail, speedy trials (by a jury of peers if requested), and habeas corpus petitions. They forbade self-incrimination and arbitrary search and seizure, and proclaimed, once again, the fundamental nature of property rights. The Ninth Amendment, which has lain dormant for two hundred years, states that there might be other rights not listed in the amendments that are, nevertheless, guaranteed by the Constitution. But the most controversial amendment, the Tenth, echoes the second article of the Articles of Confederation in declaring that the states and people retain all rights and powers not expressly granted to the national government by the Constitution. It, too, has been relatively ignored.
These ten clear statements were intended by the framers as absolute limitations on the power of government, not on the rights of individuals. In retrospect, they more accurately should be known as the Bill of Limitations on government to avoid the perception that the rights were granted by government in the first place.92
Two streams of liberty flowed from 1776. First, the Federalists synthesized Whig opposition to centralized military, economic, political, and religious authority into a program built upon separation of power, checks and balances, and staggered terms of office, which simultaneously preserved many state and local prerogatives. Second, the Anti-Federalists completed the process with the Bill of Rights, which further reinforced laws that protected states, localities, and individuals from central government coercion. Both these streams flowed through an American Christianity that emphasized duty, civic morality, skeptical questioning of temporal authority, and economic success. In addition, both streams were fed by Enlightenment can-do doctrines tempered by the realization that men were fallible, leading to an emphasis on competition, political parties, and the marketplace of ideas.
But it was a close-run thing. As Adams recalled, “All the great critical questions about men and measures from 1774 to 1778” were “decided by the vote of a single state, and that vote was often decided by a single individual.”93 It was by no means inevitable. Nevertheless, the fountain of hope had turned to a river of liberty, nourishing the new nation as it grew and prospered.
CHAPTER FIVE
Small Republic, Big Shoulders, 1789–1815
George Washington’s famed 1796 Farewell Address contains one plea that, in retrospect, seems remarkably futile: the president expressed frustration over the ongoing political strife and the rise of permanent political parties. It was an odd statement, considering that if anyone created parties (or factions, as James Madison had termed them), it was Washington, along with his brilliant aide Alexander Hamilton, through his domestic program and foreign policy. They had assistance from the Federalist Papers coauthor Madison, who relished divisions among political groups as a means to balance power. Washington’s warnings reflected his sorrow over the bitter debates that characterized politics throughout his two administrations, more so because the debates had made enemies of former colleagues Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, and Adams. By 1796 most of those men could not stand each other: only Jefferson and Madison still got along, and Washington, before his death, ceased corresponding with his fellow Virginian, Jefferson. Other Founders chose sides among these powerhouses.
Washington thought good men could disagree without the venom of politics overriding all other interests. He hoped that a band of American Revolutionaries could achieve consensus over what their Revolution was all about. In fact, Washington might well have voiced as much pride as regret over the unfolding events of the 1790s because he and his generation shaped an American political party system that endures, in recognizable form, to this day, and because the emergence of those factions, of which he so strongly disapproved, in large part guaranteed the success and moderation of that system.
From 1789 to 1815, clashes between Federalists and Anti-Federalists translated into a continuing and often venomous debate over the new nation’s domestic and foreign policies. Political parties first appeared in this era, characterized by organized congressional leadership, party newspapers whose editorials estab
lished party platforms and attacked the opposition, and the nomination of partisan national presidential candidates. Washington’s cabinet itself contained the seeds of this partisanship. Secretary of State Jefferson rallied the old Anti-Federalists under the banner of limited government and a new Jeffersonian Republican Party. Meanwhile, Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton, chief author of the Federalist Papers with Madison (who himself would make the transition to Republican), set the agenda for the Federalists. Both sides battled over Hamilton’s economic plan—his reports on debt, banking, and manufactures—while Madison, often the voice of conciliation and compromise, quietly supported the Federalist position. They simultaneously fought over whether American foreign policy would favor France or Britain in the European struggle for power. In every case the debates came down to a single issue: given that the people retained all powers but those most necessary to the functioning of the Republic, what powers did the government absolutely need? Thus, from the moment the ink dried on the Constitution, an important development had taken place in American government whereby the debate increasingly focused on the size of government rather than its virtue.
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