Last Best Hope of Earth

Tag: Political Theory

  • Constitution Sunday: “Publius,” The Federalist XLV [James Madison]

    Independent Journal (New York)

    January 26, 1788

    A nation comprised of states (or provinces) will inevitably have tension between the national government and each of the state governments. Most frequently, at the center of that tension is sovereignty; one state’s policy preference may be anathema to another state.

    (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: “Publius,” The Federalist XLIV [James Madison] Part II

    New-York Packet

    January 25, 1788

    The Federalist XLIV [James Madison] Part II Article I, Section 8, Clause 18 of the Constitution has long sparked controversy, granting Congress the power to create necessary and proper laws to execute its other powers. James Madison, in the Federalist Papers, defended this provision against those who deemed it excessive. For Constitution supporters, the Clause was crucial to prevent Congress from becoming ineffective and unimportant compared to state legislatures. James Madison argued that the Clause was essential, otherwise, the Constitution would become meaningless.

    Everywhere in the city, which had become his home, there were reminders of the inspiration he had brought.

    (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: “Americanus” [John Stevens, Jr.] VII

    Daily Advertiser (New York)

    January 21, 1788

    With the draft Constitution being circulated and reviewed by throughout the country, Governor Edmund Randolph of Virginia wrote a letter to the Speaker of the House of Delegates detailing his objections—of which there were many—to adopting the Constitution as written. Given his stature as a governor, his objections would inevitably bring people to adopt his way of thinking, foster debate, and awaken proponents of the Constitution to defend the document, explaining its merits and why adopting the Constitution was warranted despite Governor Randolph’s objections. One such defender was John Stevens, Jr., and he took on the governor’s objections in an article published in New York’s Daily Advertiser.

    (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: Rawlins Lowndes and Edward Rutledge Debate in the South Carolina Legislature

    January 16, 1788

    A government must provide its people—all of its people, varied as they are—with a structure that fosters self-preservation. In the South, for a long stretch of time, that sense of self-preservation was crucial. There was no denying that the slave economy was central to its existence that it was therefore always going to have tension with northern states. This was as true in 1788 as in 1861. And in 1788, there was rampant, raging debate surrounding the draft Constitution. In South Carolina’s legislature, two men—Rawlins Lowndes and Edward Rutledge—debated the merits of that draft, taking different sides on whether it warranted adoption.

    (more…)
  • Constitution Sunday: On The Likely Failure Of Liberty, Robert Yates and John Lansing, Jr., to Governor George Clinton

    Constitution Sunday: On The Likely Failure Of Liberty, Robert Yates and John Lansing, Jr., to Governor George Clinton

    January 14, 1788

    Daily Advertiser (New York)

    Revising the Articles of Confederation was always going to be a difficult task. The system that the Articles erected was one where the states pulled the strings of a marionette puppet of a federal government; without the states, the federal government was nothing: for instance, although the Confederation Congress could impose a tax, it lacked any independent power of enforcement and would need unanimous approval of the state legislatures. Nonetheless, when delegates met in Philadelphia in a convention that resulted in the draft Constitution, they had originally set out to revise those Articles of Confederation, and, by amendment, to refine the existing system into a more functional, more effective government.

    (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: John Hancock’s Final Observation

    February 6, 1788

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    At the conclusion of the Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, John Hancock requested to “close the business with a few words.” He began with an endorsement: the Constitution—amended or not—was destined to deliver political freedom and dignity to the country. This was particularly so given the exhaustive debate that the draft Constitution fostered all of which tended to improve the proposed government.

    (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: Charles Jarvis on the Amendment Procedure: An Irrefutable Argument for Ratification

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    January 30, 1788

    Revolutions, civil wars, and coups haunt leaders of all types of governments. The very prospect of these events conjures awful images, and every leader searches for ways to prevent and mitigate them. For some, tamping down dissent with force and papering over the people’s differences through campaigns of nationalism are not only sufficient but necessary to maintain the status quo. For others, democracies, there must be some tailoring of the government’s contours to the people; even as generations pass, morals change, and principles transform.

    (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: General William Heath on Slavery

    Massachusetts Ratifying Convention

    January 30, 1788

    In the late 1700s and early 1800s, it was not a uniquely American question of how to deal with the concept of slavery. It was an institution that, as each year passed, was becoming more and more antiquated; a relic of a time when treating humans as beasts was widespread and accepted. Yet the question remained of how a federal government or other states could wean a part of society—in the United States, the South—off of slavery. Then, there was the question of whether a federal government or other states should even be so intimately involved in another state’s business.

    (more…)
  • The Nineteenth Century Liberal

    The Nineteenth Century Liberal

    The two dominant American political parties of the late 1860s, the Republicans and the Democrats, are the parties that continue to dominate the political landscape into the early Twenty-First Century. Although they are the same parties in name, many of the policies they espouse—and the place on the political spectrum their supporters find themselves—have almost entirely reversed in the intervening century and a half. In modern parlance, a liberal is one that finds himself or herself on the left side of the political spectrum and is more likely to be a member of the Democratic Party. In the late Nineteenth Century, the term had an entirely different meaning. (more…)

  • Constitution Sunday: Answers to Mason’s “Objections”: “Marcus” [James Iredell] II

    Answers to Mason’s “Objections”: “Marcus” [James Iredell] II

    Norfolk and Portsmouth Journal (Virginia), February 27, 1788

    Following are excerpts from James Iredell’s responses to George Mason’s “Objections” to the Constitution:

    “IVth. Objection. The Judiciary of the United States is so constructed and extended, as to absorb and destroy the Judiciaries of the several States (more…)