5: MODULE THE EXPERIMENT BEGINS
The United States, then and now, has been described as "the Great Experiment." Those who use that moniker tacitly ask: can a large, diverse republic built upon democratic institutions survive over time? The path from war to stability was neither easy nor straight, and, consistent with the inescapable flaws and idiosyncracies of the men who crafted it, the system we enjoy today was not without shortcomings--shortcomings that would leave the United States embroiled in conflict for decades to come.
THE MANY WARS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Conventional Though we tend to think of the revolution as a single conflict, it was actually three intersecting campaigns--and not all of them military. Most of the storied combat engagements (Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Cowpens, Trenton and Princeton, Yorktown) involved formal, uniformed troops in conventional warfare--that is, each army lined up across from one another in an open field, the first rank dropped to a knee while the second rank remained standing, they aimed, fired, and the killed and wounded collapsed to the ground while their replacements stepped forward, rinse and repeat. This campaign--the conventional campaign--pitted the elite British Royal Army against the American Continental Army and George Washington, who found himself plagued by several fundamental disadvantages. First, the
British consistently enjoyed numerical superiority over the Continental forces; at any given time, Washington had around 19,000 men available to him, while the British fielded roughly 32,000. The red coats were better equipped and provisioned, at least initially, and had far more discipline and experience that the hastilyQuickTimeTM and a TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor are needed to see this picture.
assembled Continental troops. These inescapable facts shaped Washington's approach to the conflict. He could not employ traditional combat tactics; open confrontations with the British, even if the colonists exacted as many casualties as they suffered, would
eventually and inevitably bleed the army to death. Instead, Washington elected to fight on the strategic defensive, retreating from open confrontations with the British and withdrawing until he found ground that provided his army with natural fortifications and other advantages. Geography plays a critical role in the success or failure of any military operation, and Washington shrewdly used the land to neutralize the numerical advantages of the British. Ultimately, however, Washington realized that the colonists would likely be unable to win a prolonged military conflict with the British; they were simply too strong. He decided to concentrate his effort, then, on exhausting the public will in England to prosecute the war. If Washington could make the war unbearably expensive in blood and treasure, then perhaps the English people would not want to continue. It was a risky strategy, but given his meager resources, Washington had little choice.
Bunker Hill probably illuminates this approach better than any other battle. In June 1775, British troops attempted to dislodge the colonists from behind an earthen wall. Their commander, General William Prescott, allegedly ordered his men to hold their fire until they could see "the whites of their eyes." Now, this could be viewed as simply a good, old-fashioned, tough-guys war story, but it demonstrates a critical goal of the Continental Army. It was hazardous to allow the British to approach so closely, but to do so meant also that every colonists' shot was likely to find its mark; the colonists would inflict deaths, not injuries, and thereby erode the British size advantage. Ultimately, Bunker Hill was a British victory--they took the position once the colonists ran out of ammunition--but the true story lies in the casualty count: 400 colonial casualties, and 1,054 British casualties. What's more, the losses sustained at Bunker Hill rendered the British command more cautious, which played right into Washington's hands. Guerrilla The second campaign of the revolution was a guerrilla struggle found between the colonial militia and the British army. If you've seen The Patriot, you have a sense of what this particular campaign was like. The minutemen were hardly professional soldiers, although they did train somewhat for combat. Rather, they were farmers and merchants who enlisted to protect their homes, families, and community from the British threat. When redcoats approached, the militia formed up, ambushed the British from cover, inflicted casualties, and then disappeared back into the
civilian population. This was their greatest asset: they were not uniformed, they did not carry their arms constantly on their person, they did not announce their presence with flags or trumpet voluntaries. On the contrary, they looked just like every other
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civilian until they attacked; their weapons, which they used daily to hunt game to put meat on the table, lay in a closet, or perhaps against the bedroom wall, in their homes. These tactics heaped psychological damage upon the physical damage the militia inflicted upon the
British, for the redcoats never knew when the minutemen would attack. They could not enter a community in comfort, for they could not distinguish friend from foe--they all looked the same. Ironically, the minutemen learned the principles of guerrilla warfare from their so-called "inferior" and "primitive" enemies--Native Americans. Hearts and Minds Perhaps no campaign during the Revolution was as critical to success as the campaign for the hearts and minds of the colonists. Both sides-- revolutionaries and the British--fought this battle, and neither could ultimately prevail in the war without winning this particular struggle. This was essentially a propaganda campaign--a battle of ideas. For the revolutionaries, the task was to convert those undecided or Loyalist colonists who did not subscribe to the revolutionary cause. The Loyalist position was hardly an illogical one: the prospects for military success were frequently dim, and the consequences for those who supported the revolution, in the event of its failure, would likely be both extreme and painful. Who wants to
hitch their wagon to a falling star? For the revolutionaries, then, the challenge was to demonstrate the viability of the revolutionary effort, which bound the propaganda war inextricably to the conventional campaign. No one felt this dual pressure more than Washington, who quickly realized that repeated defeats would not only demoralize his troops, but the colonists as well. He was therefore very careful in choosing battle, and often took great risks just to score victories for American morale. For this very reason, Washington made his now-legendary decision on December 24, 1776 to take the offensive, cross the frozen Delaware River overnight and surprise a regiment of Hessian (German) mercenaries at Trenton before delivering a stunning defeat to the British at Princeton weeks later. Emboldened by the newly-issued Declaration of
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Independence, both the Continental Army and the revolutionary cause found new life after these dramatic successes, and this daring--and tactically
brilliant--move no doubt saved the revolution from almost certain defeat. American morale surged yet again with victory at Saratoga in 1777, which not only convinced a growing majority of the colonists that the revolution
was a worthwhile endeavor, but also caught the attention of France, who had been searching for an opportunity to avenge their loss of the French and Indian War since 1763. The timely arrival of the French Navy off Yorktown in 1781 sent public approval of the war plummeting in England; the political fallout from Cornwallis's surrender in Virginia cost Prime Minister North his job. Even though the British still had some thirty thousand troops occupying New York, Charleston, and Savannah, the English public had had enough: Parliament voted in April 1782 to end the war in America, and the Treaty of Paris, recognizing American independence, was signed in September 1783. Washington's risky strategy had prevailed. In some ways, the significance of the hearts and minds campaign contributed decisively to British defeat. As surely as the revolutionaries struggled to persuade the unconvinced that the revolution would succeed, the British sought to demonstrate that it would not. This meant military victory, but it also meant that the British army could not employ its full array of methods to ensure military victory, lest they outrage the civilian population and stimulate increased sympathy for the revolution. Don't be fooled by The Patriot; the British would never have condoned locking innocent civilians in a church and then setting it ablaze, but they did employ brutality when dealing with captured enemy troops or spies. Torture was not unheard of, and--then, at least--an accepted way of extracting information. They couldn't do this. Nor could the British recruit slaves or Native Americans to
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their cause--the racial offense implicit in such a move would drive colonists--particularly in the south, where Loyalist sympathies were the highest--to the revolutionary banner in droves. So why did the British lose this thing? Let's face facts: for all of the British advantages--professional army, superior navy, deep pockets--they faced serious obstacles in attempting to subdue the colonists. First, the distance between England and America created insurmountable logistical problems. Getting food, equipment, reserves, and communications to British command took weeks, and the orders were almost always out of date by the time they arrived in the colonies. The colonists enjoyed the opposite: everything then needed was local, and thus easier to obtain. The British struggled to define their objectives. What was the goal? Annihilating Washington's army? Fair enough, but that's hard to do when the guy won't fight! Capture the enemy capital? There wasn't one yet; the Continental Congress shuttled from Philadelphia to New York and back again; they could move as they pleased (and did), and thus no city held any particular political significance for the colonists. Exhaust the colonists' will to fight? That involved pacification, and the colonies were simply too large for the British to control them by force. They could either monitor the colonists, or confront Washington--they couldn't do both. The British inability to get clarity on any of these issues compromised their attempt to identify concrete goals for the war, and thus a coherent method for pursuing them. Perhaps more than any other factor, this determined the outcome of the American Revolution.
A MORE PERFECT UNION
Imagine the mood among the newly-minted Americans once the Peace of Paris was signed: Hurrah! We won! Now what? Indeed, despite military success, the United States in 1783 had by no means escaped the manifold dangers that still threatened the infant, vulnerable republic. The United States in 1783 was very much like a newborn gazelle on the African savannah: weak, shaky, and ripe for predation. The revolutionary leadership had been savvy enough to supply an administrative system for the postwar society, but thoughtful Americans quickly realized that the existing institutions were inadequate to meet the challenges that faced the United States. From the call to reform the American government, that it might confront the issues endemic to such a large and diverse republic, emerged the structures of civil law that remain intact today.
ON SHAKY GROUND
The Continental Congress certainly functioned as a legitimate government during the revolutionary war, but it was not. In 1776, Virginian Richard Henry Lee coupled a proposal for
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independence with a suggestion to create a permanent national government--a confederation of states with a written constitution. John Dickinson, a moderate from Delaware who voted against the Declaration of Independence but nonetheless recognized a need for a
coherent government, was tapped to draft the new system, and produced the Articles of Confederation. The Articles reflected the age in which they were
written, for Dickinson crafted a document borne of fear of and contempt for strong, centralized authority. The powers of the federal government were few: it could make treaties, conduct military and foreign affairs, and could ask states to pay their expenses. Notably absent: a chief executive, Congressional authority to levy national taxes, or to raise a national army. Perhaps no aspect of the Articles proved as frustrating, however, as the amendment process, which required the unanimous consent of the states before the change occurred. Practically speaking, this made a functioning government virtually impossible; any act of Congress required nine of thirteen votes, and the prospect of securing that level of agreement among states that were already evolving into at least two distinct socioeconomic entities was slim. This was, in part, by design. Sovereignty in the system remained deliberately unbalanced and invested in the several states. The inadequacy of the Articles had become apparent by the end of the war, sharpened by a series of economic, diplomatic, and internal security problems that made a new system virtually inevitable. Economic The Revolution disrupted the American economy in countless ways. Ordinary processes of production and exchange were destabilized, hurting some Americans and creating speculative opportunities for others. The Continental Congress, moreover, without any means by which to finance the war, resorted to printing paper currency and wild deficit spending that
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undermined the stability of the national economy. The Congress couldn't tax the colonists--they had revolted precisely because of high taxes; what's more, they didn't have any authority to do so. Thus, by 1780, the Congress had printed more than $241 million in revolutionary currency, which by 1785 had become virtually worthless. As Congress struggled to pay individual war claims, the national debt quickly grew from $11 million to $28 million. The private sector, meanwhile, suffered through constant unpredictability in prices; massive inflation during the war gave way to severe deflation afterwards. The economy vacillated like a roller coaster, and Americans weren't particularly eager to get on. To its credit, Congress did take
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advantage of the one asset it had: land. Through a 1785 Land Ordinance and the Northwest Ordinance (1787), Congress established process a for surveying, parceling, and buying land, and also the process by
which territories became states. Heavy land speculation--in which investors buy not to live on it, but to profit from its eventual appreciation--ensued, thus supplying the government with a desperately needed reservoir of cash, but the national economic turbulence continued. Diplomatic While the new states huddled against the Atlantic shoreline, powers lurked above and behind them that posed constant threats to American security.
Since 1763, Spain had maintained control of the Mississippi River, which American merchants desperately wanted to use for access to the Gulf of Mexico. As Anglo settlement continued to press westward into Kentucky and Tennessee, the prospects for conflict increased. Indeed, in 1784, the Spanish governor of Louisiana closed the Mississippi to American commercial traffic, and soon after began conspiring with local native tribes to harass and intimidate the migrating Americans. In Canada, a formidable British presence remained, and the bad blood from the revolution was, of course, still fresh. They, too, aided indigenous tribes in attacking Americans on the frontier by supplying weapons to the natives. Thus, even on their own soil, Americans had little cause to feel completely safe. Security Economic uncertainty typically breeds other forms of trouble, and it was no different here. Excessive state power led to disjointed commercial laws throughout the country, which depressed interstate commerce. No group was affected more than American farmers, however, who profited during the war, but in the aftermath found themselves increasingly squeezed by falling crop prices and mounting debts. Creditors demanded repayment in hard currency (gold and silver, which were very difficult to come by) that farmers did not have; debtors demanded new, flexible paper currency as a means of debt relief and to raise commodity prices. Indeed, some states began issuing paper currency without federal sanction. Rhode Island, ever the renegade, printed more than any other state, and then passed a "forcing act" to coerce creditors into accepting what was essentially worthless paper for debt repayment. It was a bona fide crisis, for the majority of Americans were still small, self-sufficient farmers, and while the wealthy merchant class opened new trade routes throughout the world and multiplied their wealth, the
farmer sank deeper into debt and despair. In 1787, this situation touched off a violent confrontation in Massachusetts, where the rigidly conservative regime there levied poll and land taxes--the burden of which fell on farmers and the poor--in order to pay the state's war debts, which were privately held, and mainly by the wealthy class. Farmers and indigents appealed to the legislature to act on this "reverse Robin Hood" situation, but the legislature adjourned in 1786 without even discussing the issue. Outraged, farmers in three western Massachusetts counties erupted into spontaneous revolt, closing local courts to prevent foreclosures, and harassing public officials. These discontents merged into a ramshackle "army" under the leadership of Daniel Shays, a destitute war veteran. In 1787, the group of over twelve hundred angry men advanced on the federal arsenal in Springfield. The mob was quickly "discouraged" by the arrival
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off a small militia force, but the incident generated some sympathy in the new legislature, which reduced taxes and fees to relieve some of the debt. Shays' Rebellion, however, inarguably demonstrated the need for a stronger
federal government with which to deal with both the underlying economic problems and the issue of violence, which appeared sporadically throughout the country, with heavy activity in western Pennsylvania. At a meeting of bankers, merchants, and other civic-minded individuals in 1786, Alexander Hamilton of New York introduced a resolution for a convention in Philadelphia to consider measures necessary
"to render the constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union." The Confederation Congress followed suit, passing a resolution endorsing a convention "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation." Take careful note of the language--nowhere does it authorize the convention to scrap the Articles and start fresh. This becomes a major point of contention during and after the convention. The Constitutional Convention (1787) With Congressional authorization in hand, twenty-nine delegates began work on May 25, 1787, in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was a diverse bunch, and delegates came and went according to their particular obligations. Seventy-three delegates were elected from nine states overall, and fifty-five of those attended the convention at one time or another. Washington presided over the convention, although he rarely participated; Ben Franklin, the oldest delegate, also contributed little beyond the occasional pearl of wisdom or ribald joke. Not everyone agreed with the premise of the convention; Patrick Henry, whose suspicion of centralized authority was already the stuff of legend, refused to attend as a delegate from Virginia because he "smelled a rat" in the proceedings. Thomas Jefferson was notably absent, as was John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, who desperately wanted to stay, but was forced to walk out with the rest of the New York delegation, who objected to the absence of an individual bill of rights.
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While the delegates certainly had their differences, they agreed on several fundamental principles. First, they all believed that government derived its powers from the consent of the people, but society must also be protected from what they defined as the "tyranny of the majority." In other words, majority rule does not mean silencing minority voices. They agreed that checks against and balances of power were necessary to prevent tyranny, and that the system itself should serve as an obstacle to personal ambition. James Madison of Virginia said it best: "If all people were angels, no government would be necessary." They also agreed, as Washington articulated, that they had overestimated the extent to which individuals would serve the public good out of a sense of civic virtue. This was the greatest failure of the Articles. Clearly, a functional republic could not be built completely upon faith in the essential goodness of man. Madison quickly emerged as the central figure at the convention. He hardly fit the mold--he was a small, wispy man who suffered from chronic headaches and pathological shyness. He was nervous in crowds, and his high-pitched voice made him a reluctant and self-conscious orator. Yet, he was a
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voracious reader, and perhaps the most prepared delegate at the convention, having studied historic forms of government for months before the assembly convened. He drafted a plan for a new system, which
was dubbed the Virginia Plan. It called for scrapping the purpose of the convention altogether and submitting a new form of government, complete with distinct legislative, executive, and judicial branches; a bicameral legislature with a lower house chosen by popular vote and the upper chosen by the lower; and a National Congress that would retain sovereignty over the
states. Although it had a short-lived competitor in the "New Jersey Plan," Madison's ideas overwhelmingly won out, but not before the delegates resolved some fundamental issues. The first was virtually a given: should the delegates violate their mandate and discard the Articles of Confederation? Everyone believed that a completely new system was necessary, but they recognized that doing so would supply ammunition to opponents of the new system, who would justifiably argue that the convention had not been given the authority to create a new government. They decided to deal with that problem when it arose. A second, a more contentious issue, was the question of representation. Should it be apportioned on the basis of population, or equally divided among the states? As you might expect, this split the delegates between the populous states and the less-populated ones. Of course, the larger states wanted Congress apportioned by population, which would give them control of the government, while the smaller states wanted equality. This one got pretty heated before Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman introduced his "Great Compromise," which had the lower house (House of Representatives) apportioned by population, and the upper house (Senate) apportioned equally. No question proved as problematic, however, as the issue of slavery. The South had by now become almost completely dependent upon slave labor for the stability of its agricultural economy. How did the slaves fit into the question of apportioning representation? The southern delegates wanted them counted; the northern delegates did not. Northern delegates did want to see slaves taxed as property (since that's how the southerners claimed to view them anyway), but southerners objected. After fiery debate, an
amendment once introduced for the Articles of Confederation, ironically, supplied the answer: slaves would count for both tax and apportionment purposes as three-fifths of a person. This Three-Fifths Compromise satisfied everyone, who then turned to whether to outlaw the Atlantic slave trade or not. Southerners resisted it, of course, but the fact of the matter was that by 1787, the slave population had been reproducing naturally; the slave trade supplied few new slaves to the American economy. The delegates solved the question by not solving it; they agreed to permit the trade until 1808.
The slavery debate at the convention, however, illuminates some interesting contradictions both in the process and in the minds of the slaveholders themselves. Madison, who kept a meticulous journal of the proceedings, noted that the morality of slavery never became an issue. In arguing for representation for slaves, however, southern delegates supply a brief glimpse into their real thinking on the question of slavery. Think back to the causes of the revolution: Americans fought the British because they
believed that proper representation was one of their due rights as citizens of England. It was because they had no representation that Parliament could not justifiably tax the colonists. Here then, in Philadelphia, was a group of southerners arguing for representation, a fundamental right of citizenship, for slaves. Is there an implicit claim here that slaves were citizens? Probably not; few Americans at that time ever allowed "slave" and "citizen" to collide in the same sentence. What I find compelling, however, is that, at a minimum, we can reasonably interpret this argument as a silent confession that the slaveholders recognized the slaves as human. Such a concession would certainly undermine the "otherness" rationale for enslavement, and reveals to posterity that white slaveholders knew that they were exploiting and abusing human beings, and that therefore their actions were morally reprehensible. What's more, in the language of the Constitution (which I encourage you to read--you can find it in Appendix A-3 of the LEP), a document shot through with cerebral appeals to liberty and equality, the words "slave" and "slavery" are carefully avoided, replaced instead by "Free Persons" and "all other persons," or persons "held to Service of Labor," and so on. The Constitution even has a fugitive slave law in Article IV, Section 2, Part 3. Think about this: if the framers of the Constitution truly shared broad--if silent--agreement over the morality of the institution of slavery, why couldn't they bring themselves to use the word itself? Surely, men of conviction would have no difficulty calling something they found acceptable by its rightful name--and yet they did not. Wouldn't they be able to stomach the use of the word "slave" in the law of the land if they thought it legally and morally upright?
I won't belabor you with the details of the Constitution; you can read it for yourself. I will say this: while much of the Constitution borrowed upon the "greatest hits" of past government structures, the Constitution made a unique and novel contribution to political theory. By vesting ultimate authority in the people, the framers divide sovereignty within the government; this departed from the traditional model in which the legislature derived authority from the executive. In the Constitutional structure, the legislature had express powers distinct from and equal to the executive.
THE FOUNDING FATHERS: AN ASSESSMENT
It is very easy to romanticize the delegates in Philadelphia, but to view them as above error and reproach would be mistaken. They were, after all, only human; take Luther Martin of Maryland, for example, who was so habitually intoxicated during the convention that he often couldn't finish his own fiery speeches. Because they were human, their successes were also tempered with failures. Among their successes, we must count a truly remarkable system of government in the Constitution. Flexible, permitting change over time, and operating in harmony with the popular will, the United States Constitution has an organic character--it is a living document. The authors wisely avoided specific solutions to specific problems, providing instead a framework for solving all problems through the distribution of power. The system permitted room for a "loyal opposition"--which engendered a partisan political culture that would have threatened the survival of a more rigid document. These were and are worthy accomplishments. We cannot ignore, however, the failure to reckon with the issue of slavery. We cannot ignore
the narrow interpretation of citizenship to exclude unpropertied white men and women, who made significant contributions to the revolution by, among other things, producing homespun clothing in the absence of imported British textiles. Delaying slavery had both practical and ideological dimensions: to outlaw slavery in a document promoting freedom would have cost the Constitution the southern votes it needed for ratification, and the risk of fracturing the infant nation over the question of slavery was too great for even the most enlightened framers, who thus remained silent. In doing so, however, we see perhaps the greatest failure of the "Founding Fathers." In their silence, they planted the seeds of division in the United States over the institution of slavery, and through their inaction, they vastly increased the likelihood that the solution would be found not by the spilling of ink, but by the spilling of blood.