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A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State

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The most important development in early American history in the last fifty years has been archival. The debates surrounding the adoption of the Constitution continue to be thoroughly exhumed for insights into what our Founders were thinking. The writings of the Anti-Federalists both in the press of the time and in the state conventions that approved the Constitution have been reconsidered. I recently reviewed a history by Saul Cornell that considers those writings to be the beginnings of a dissenting tradition that continues to this day.

One of the things that strikes any reader of recent histories of the ratification debates is what a gold mine it is for philosophy of history. There are few historical moments that can offer greater insight into the difficulties of determining what were the intentions or motives behind the speech and actions of historical actors. Depending on what reading background, theory of human nature and political persuasion a historian brings to their readings of these debates it is possible to see Madison, Hamilton and the other players as having any number of motives.

Max Edling has obviously lived and breathed the volumes of the ongoing publications of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution. More importantly he has studied deeply the history of nation formation in Europe. The lesson of that branch of European history has been that the modern European state was formed by the exigencies of war. Baldly put, European states started to force each other into maintaining large armies (or navies) even during peacetime. This development fed and was fed by a revolution in state financing. The majority of the monies to maintain their armies and fight their wars came from loans. In England, this became a large funded public debt which was religiously serviced by taxes and securities.

This is the background against which Edling wants us to see the ratification debate. The Federalists ignored their instructions to amend the Articles of Confederation and wrote up a whole new document, our present Constitution. The most controversial portions of that document related to the maintenance of a peacetime army and the unlimited ability to raise taxes. Our Anti-Federalists, who Edling sees as the American progeny of the English "Country" dissent traditions saw this as the road to tyranny. Standing armies in peacetime had been murderously used to squelch dissent in England (the killing of 7 at St. George's Fields in 1768) and in America (the Boston Massacre in 1770).

The Federalists, on the other hand, argued that we had no choice. England remained to our north and Spain was to the south and at the mouth of the Mississippi. The English had refused to turn over forts in the west as agreed in the peace accords. Unless those troops were removed and the forts handed over there was no way to assert control over the formidable Indian tribes of the Old Northwest.

Even worse, the federal government under that Articles of Confederation was insolvent by 1787. The various states ignored the requisitions of the Congress, the certificates that we had used to pay off the Continental Army at the end of the Revolution were worthless, we had defaulted on loans from France and Spain and had actually had to borrow more money from Dutch lenders in order to pay them the servicing on debts we already owed them.

The Federalists believed that the key to rescuing our credit and our ability to defend ourselves (remember that modern wars are always fought on credit) was for the Federal government to be able to establish and collect taxes directly from the people. A government without a source of revenue is a beggar. Here's another thought for you; Who would fight for us the next time? Knowing that we had failed to pay troops some of whom had fought seven years in our Revolution?

Again, the Anti-Federalists had concerns over the power of the national government to tax. It was their belief that the state legislatures were far more representative of the people's wishes than the national government could ever be. The new national government would would feel any number of temptations to lay more taxes on the people. Recent English history showed that this was quite probable.

One aside- it is very clear from Edling's argument that in the thought of many of the founders on both sides of the ratification debate that the final stage of legitimizing any law was the willingness of the people to obey it. In other words, if there was wide spread resistance to any measure passed that it was the legitimacy of the measure that was questioned. The people's representatives were seen to have failed in their function. Can you imagine our George II operating under such conditions? Just imagine how the Anti-Federalists would have reacted to the Patriot Act!

My only problem with Edling's argument is that it is too monocausal. I think that Edling has made an enormous contribution to our understanding of the debates of the founding. But if I had to use only one prism to view those debates, it would be the concept of localism versus distant government. I tend to read the Federalists as wanting a strong national government that was also somewhat distant from the people. It had to be able to raise taxes, borrow money and wage war. Otherwise it would inevitably dissolve. They also wanted a legal system that was a little further out of the control of local juries and judges. They wanted the ability to set national economic policy. They wanted to create a political culture that would continue to allow the "natural" elite to rule and put some breaks on mobocracy, etc.. I believe that they realized that the only way to legitimately do that was to create a stronger more effective national government.

In any case, Edling's book is now necessary reading for a fuller understanding of the political context in which our founders lived. Start reading, people.

This book is amazing. It explains what we already know, that the United States is the only country in the world to be founded as an empire according to Noam Chomsky. The Convention of 1787 was a coup, according to Harlow Giles Unger. It was a transformation of power, from the States to the federal govenment. The Federalist were after 4 main things. the power and authority over the war making, extracting resources, taxes, and controling the money supply.

Max Edling's book explains these facts wonderfully. If you don't get this book, your making a huge mistake. This book is amazing.

I just read this remarkable (and slim) book. Then I read it again.

Most Oxford University Press books are slanted to the left of Lenin. I do not know how this one slipped through. Perhaps it was the deceptive title, which might lead one to mistake it for a statist tract. It is nothing of the sort.

Edling is a young man from Sweden -- which is not the same as the proverbial "man from Mars," but is close enough when it comes to viewing the United States from an outsider's perspective. Edling looks at America of the 1780s without the distractions of America now (or in between).

Edling's central thesis is that the essential debate between the Federalists and the anti-Federalists during the Ratification debate was on this question:

Would the newly drafted Constitution succeed in keeping (small d) democrats out of the national government?

The Convention had already abandoned the state governments to the (small d) democrats, which is why the definitions of citizenship and the franchise were left to each individual state, and are barely mentioned in the Constitution.

Both sides in the Ratification debate, says Edling, agreed that this was the only area left unresolved, the only debate that really mattered.

The Federalists said their Constitution would do the job.

The anti-Federalists said it would fail.

Both sides agreed that keeping (small d) democrats out of the national government was a worthy goal, indeed the ONLY reason for having a Constitution at all: to prevent the Republic from becoming a Democracy, and thence inevitably a Tyranny.

Ultimately they reached a compromise, unsatisfactory to both.

This compromise was the Bill of Rights, Amendments I-X.

The Federalists said this Bill was unnecessary, and showed too little faith in the Constitution.

The anti-Federalists said this Bill was not nearly enough, but better than nothing. They had no faith in the Legislative Branch, asserted that under the Constitution, the Legislature would still be as reckless, feckless, and corrupt as the Continental Congress, and as that Ancient Cesspit over in Westminster, the British Parliament.

The anti-Federalists proved correct in their prognosis.
Alas they had no satisfactory prescription.

Thomas Jefferson, who did more than anyone to bring (small d) democrats into the national government, lived long enough to regret his folly -- and to regret that when he had the chance, he failed to hang his vice president, Aaron Burr, for insurrection and treason (Burr had been co-founder with George Clinton of the Democratic Party in New York).

* * * *

I had never understood the meaning of Alexander Hamilton's "funded debt," copied from the English "consols". Neither did Jefferson. Neither does anyone opining in the media today, from Left or Right or out in Space.

Thanks to young Mr Edling, now I get it.

The funded debt is not just about "deficit financing." That is a red herring.

It is about private savers and investors funding national government operations (which in the 1780s meant defense and war, nothing else), while annual taxes paid only the annual interest on that obligation -- with FULL understanding on all sides that the PRINCIPAL would NEVER be repaid, but that the interest would always be paid, paid on time and in hard money. This guarantee would make government bonds the safest savings vehicle available, and make them totally liquid despite never being redeemed, because there was always a strong secondary market for interest bearing bonds underwritten by the full faith and credit of the government.

This is how our funded debt continues to work, despite the irrelevant rhetoric and total misunderstandings on all sides, and even despite the abolition of hard currency. This is why foreigners remain happy to own American debt, a fact that puzzles even the sages at the Wall Street Journal.

Anyone who uses the word "deficit" does not understand how funded debt works. There is no deficit. There is only the annual interest cost of the debt, versus annual federal revenue. As long as the revenue is sufficient to pay the interest, and as long as paying that interest remains the first financial obligation of the government, its bonds remain sound.

Similarly, anyone who imagines there can be an imbalance of trade does not understand trade. Any seeming imbalance in trade flow is balanced by money flow, and that money can be used for anything, but particularly for purchasing government bonds, and collecting the interest on them. The only effect of an imbalance of trade is an increase in the proportion of government debt held by foreigners.

Thank you Mr. Edling!

"Edling's book is a powerfully argued revisionist interpretation of the origins of the Constitution. More than anything else, it helps us better understand the constitutional sources of the gigantic fiscal-military state that the United States has become."
--Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of *The Radical Roots of the American Revolution*

"Max M. Edling's exciting new book is a breath of fresh air in an agenda-driven and highly politicized historical literature that has lost touch with historical reality. The state-building paradigm enables Edling to bring history back in, both through comparative analysis of developments elsewhere and by reconstructing the broader geopolitical context within which the American federal state operated. REVOLUTION IN FAVOR OF GOVERNMENT is an impressive achievement."
--Peter Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History, University of Virginia

"Certain to be controversial, this major and timely work alters the terms of discussion about the Framers' intentions in writing the Constitution and about the kind of government they sought to establish. Everyone interested in the subject will have to contend with Edling's arguments, which challenge over 30 years of widely accepted scholarship."
--James M. Banner, Jr., author of *The Elements of Teaching*

"Not only a pleasure to read but extremely informative and persuasively argued. I will never think about the US Constitution in the old way again."
--Daniel W. Howe, Rhodes Professor of American History, Emeritus, Oxford University