Andrew I appreciate the info and web links. I've never been to Scotchtown... that's like heresy for a Virginian and Patrick Henry admirer. I need to go! Are there any books out there that address Henry's spiritual side and his faith? He was a devout Presbyterian and a passionate Christian particularly as he matured.
I have a friend from undergrad that loathes the Anti-Federalists... the Hamiltonian yankee buddy of mine smears them as Jacobins. Nonetheless, Hamilton is the centralizer who spoke incessantly of a "general will" and got slapped with the appellation "
The Rousseau of the Right" by historian Cecelia Kenyon.
George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights, said he "would sooner chop off his right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands." However, people including Anti-Federalist fans forget that the Anti-Federalist pull in Constitutional Convention tossed out the wholly national polity that Hamilton wanted, and the consensus was for a federal polity. The phraseology Anti-Federalist is a misnomer anyway. The so called Anti-Federalists after all wanted a federal polity where the states were equal as opposed to a consolidated national polity where the national Congress has a
general legislative power over virtually all objects of power like they do now. There is prescriptive wisdom in the Anti-Federalist critique as their predictions have proved omninously prophetic... Now, Congress has a general legislative power, because language like "necessary and proper" and "general welfare" was used to subvert that Constitution of expressed "enumerated objects" of power, which Madison spoke of so affectionately. Mason prophetically predicted a number of infractions that did occur when the consolidationists hijacked and subverted the spirit of the Constitution by construction. The Opinions on the Constitutionality of the National Bank where Randolph, Jefferson and Madison spar with Hamilton are an eye opener. The subversion started early.
The nationalists that stood on the mantle of total consolidation needed secrecy because they could not accomplish their aims without it. The secrecy in which the 1787 Constitutional Convention proceedings were conducted served to cast fog on the Constitution almost from its impetus, though the consolidationist camp was summarily defeated in the convention, they worked afterwords to accomplish their ends through liberal construction of the Constitution. The true
federalists that primarily filled the Republican ranks in the 1790s, however, held sway and were very powerful against the fudiciary elite pushing for centralization. It is a mistake to characterize the entire Federalist Party as consolidationists, and there were complex political realignments after the Constitutional Convention in 1790s. There were some geniune Federalists that were not centralizing nationalists, but the Federalist Party obviously became essentially the party of hyper-sectionalist New Englanders and the "paper aristocracy" of the Hamiltonians. If one studies Hamilton in the Federalist papers-- and recognizes that the
Federalist Papers were really just a special pleading trying to win popular support in prominent Anti-Federalist George Clinton's New York State, you see a different picture. Publius' rhetoric is rich in states' rights platitudes. After reading the
Federalist Papers and comparing it with Hamilton's private correspondance and Hamilton's motions in the Conventions... one sees how influential the so called Anti-Federalists really were and that Publius either has a split personality or is compartmentalizing his views for pragmatic political reasons. A states' rights man can affectionately quote Hamilton in the
Federalist at times-- it seems Hamilton had a foot-shaped mouth, but the Real Hamilton was the one in the convention practically advocating a centralized unitary state on the model of Great Britain, and the one who labored for a central bank, spoilation of taxpayers, the onerous twenty-five percent excise tax that broke his party at the ballot box by 1800 while inspiring revolts throughout the 1790s. He setup the financial machinery of the B.U.S. doling out interest-bearing bonds and "bounties" to the "paper aristocracy," a phalanx of stock-jobbers, manufacturers, speculators, and the politically connected -- while saddling the taxpayers (usually yeoman farmers) with the burden for such debts. The Jefferson administration and Treasury Secretary Gallatin initiated a campaign for retirement of a sizable portion of the debt however.
In 1823, with access to the Yates notes, John Taylor produced what might be called the
classical republican critique of the Convention. John Taylor says it all right here...
Had the journal of the convention which framed the constitution of the United States, though obscure and incomplete, been published immediately after its ratification, it would have furnished lights towards a true construction, sufficiently clear to have prevented several trespasses upon its principles, and tendencies towards its subversion. Perhaps it may not be yet too late to lay before the publick the important evidence it furnishes.
The proceedings which were conducted in secret were sealed, and the Yates notes didn't pop up until years later (1820s) and Madison's notes not until after Madison died I believe. Because, the proceedings were conducted in secrecy, people who hand powers like central banks and bounties voted down-- tried to usurp those powers. Had the proceedings been conducted in the open, those protesting Hamilton's scheming could rightly point to his defeat in the Convention. Judge John Marshall and Joseph Story, expositors of judicial nationalism were beneficiares of such secrecy, in their raw grab for power.
John Taylor highlights some of Hamilton's machinations in the Convention:
June 18, it was moved by Mr. Dickinson, and resolved "that the articles of confederation ought to be revised and amended "so as to render the government of the United States, adequate to the exigencies, the preservation and the prosperity of the union." This was the first resolution in favour of a federal government in opposition to a national government, but it was speedily revoked.
On the same day, Colonel Hamilton read a plan of government, containing, among others, the following proposals: "The supreme legislative power of the United States of America to be vested in two distinct bodies of men, the one to be called the assembly, and the other the senate," excluding the word Congress, "with power to pass all laws whatsoever, subject to the negative hereafter mentioned. The senate to consist of persons elected to serve during good behaviour. The supreme executive authority of the United States to be vested in a governor, to be elected to serve during good behaviour. To have a negative upon all laws about to be passed, and the execution of all laws passed. To have the intire direction of war when authorized or begun. To have the power of pardoning all offences, except treason, which he shall not pardon without the approbation of the senate. The senate to have the sole power of declaring war. All laws of the particular states, contrary to the constitution or laws of the United States, to be utterly void. And the better to prevent such laws being passed, the governor or president of each state shall be appointed by the general government, and shall have a negative upon the laws about to be passed in the state of which he is governor or president."
It is needless to waste time in proving, that this project comprised a national government, nearly conforming to that of England; but it furnishes other remarks particularly applicable to our subject. Had it succeeded, would the proposed general governor of the United States, have been invested by "the intire direction of war," with powers to raise supplies, impress men, send militia out of the states, and make roads and canals. If any of the doctrines "that a power includes whatever may be necessary or convenient in its execution; that great power implies small power; or that power has a right to use all auxiliaries it may judge proper for advancing its designs, and to destroy all obstructions in its way," are true, then a power of intirely directing war, would have comprised many more powers than those hitherto supposed to have been tacitly annexed to the limited powers delegated by the constitution. But had this project been adopted, its prototype would have furnished many proofs that none of these doctrines are true, and might have defeated the usurpations of this great and powerful governor-general, upon the pretence that they were so. The political department, called king, in England, is invested with many very great powers, and among them, those both of declaring and directing war; and although many English kings have attempted, under cover of the appurtenances added by these doctrines to power, to extend their legitimate powers, such attempts, after producing resistance and sanguinary conflicts, have failed. One king may have lost his head for raising money unconstitutionally to build ships of war, and no king pretended he could appropriate the publick treasure to roads and canals, as deeming them appurtenant powers to his rights of declaring and directing war. These would have been formidable precedents towards preventing Colonel Hamilton's great governor-general from absorbing the powers of less powerful departments, and it seems to me that they are equally, and even more forcibly, applicable to our federal form of government. The integrity of our political departments is undoubtedly as necessary to preserve that form, as the integrity of the English departments can be to preserve a limited monarchy. Our specifications and restrictions of powers are more literal and intelligible than the English; and liberty at least, as essentially depends here, as it does in England, upon a resistance by one department against the encroachments of another.
Therein, we see the Real Hamilton who favored a centralized state, with a monarchial President, a general legislative power, a central bank, power to give subsidies to special interests, a veto over the States and appointed crony state governors from above, and lifetime Senators serving during good behavior. Even the perennial expositor of judicial nationalism, John Marshall noted, "No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States," as if pointing to Hamilton, "and of compounding the American people into one common mass." After ratification in the 1790s, Hamilton grumbled incessantly about the Constitution and his mutterings raised the ire of Madison and Jefferson who joined together against his machinations. Jefferson believed him to be in favor of a centralized government "bottommed on corruption."
The secrecy of the Convention proceedings was the work of the consolidationists who wanted their machinations conducted in secret, but the secrecy served to subvert what really emerged, which in the 1787 was a federal polity and not a national one-- despite the broad scope of powers granted to the general government.
Secret proceedings of the convention, page 12. Mr. Martin. "So extremely solicitous were they, that their proceedings should not transpire, that the members were prohibited even from taking copies of resolutions, on which the convention were deliberating, or extracts of any kind from the journals, without formally moving for, and obtaining permission, by a vote of the convention, for that purpose."
The fact of this jealous secrecy is ascertained by the journal, and the perseverance in it for years. Even now, the veil is imperfectly removed; the journal has not come to the general knowledge of the publick, and it appears in a mutilated state. It stops or is impenetrably obscure, precisely at the period when the projected plan for a national form of government was supplanted by the federal system; and a suppression of the important steps by which this radical change was effected, must have taken place in the convention, or subsequently. Thus the vindicators of a federal construction of the constitution are deprived of a great mass of light, and the consolidating school have gotten rid of a great mass of detection. Secrecy is intended for delusion, and delusion is fraud. If it was dictated by an apprehension, that a knowledge of the propositions and debates, would have alarmed the settled preference of the states and of the publick, for a federal form of government, it amounts to an acknowledgement that these propositions and debates were hostile to that form and to the publick opinion. If, by an apprehension that a publication of the journal and debates, would produce a construction hostile to the rejected national form of government, it is an acknowledgment that constructions in favour of that form, are hostile to the constitution adopted.To avoid these consequences, and no others that I can discern, it was necessary to keep the people in the dark, and this stratagem to obtain a victory over their most sacred right in the ambuscade mode, can only be accounted for upon a supposition, that a real hostility of opinion existed between the publick and a party of politicians behind the curtain, which rendered it necessary that the people should be worked as puppets, first by the wire of concealment, and secondly by the wire of construction, into the catastrophe of a consolidated government, either national or monarchical.
After failing to accomplish their ends, and attaining a centralized unitary state in the Convention of 1787, the centralizing nationalists and those on the mantle of consolidation like Hamilton sought to achieve their aims by liberal "construction" of the Constitution. Hamilton favored an entrenched plutocracy of the fudiciary elite:
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people... turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government.
In his frustrations with the Republicans and the strict constructionists, Hamilton called the Constitution a "frail and worthless fabric" and he called the people a "great beast." His off-the-cuff remarks and smears against the 1787 Constitution aroused the concern of Jefferson and Madison who continiously warned Washington.
John Taylor of Caroline further surmised,
Sovereignty is the highest degree of political power, and the establishment of a form of government, the highest proof which can be given of its existence. The states could not have reserved any rights by the articles of their union, if they had not been sovereign, because they could have no rights, unless they flowed from that source. In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constituted; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed. Could the states have imagined, when they entered into a union, and retained the power of diminishing, extending, or destroying the powers of the federal government, that they who "created and could destroy," might have this maxim turned upon themselves, by their own creature; and that this misapplication of words was able both to deprive them of sovereignty, and bestow it upon a union subordinate to their will, even for existence. I have no idea of a sovereignty constituted upon better ground than that of each state, nor of one which can be pretended to on worse, than that claimed for the federal government, or some portion of it. Conquest or force would give a much better title to sovereignty, than a limited deputation or delegation of authority. The deputations by sovereignties, far from being considered as killing the sovereignties from which they have derived limited powers, are evidences of their existence; and leagues between states demonstrate their vitality. The sovereignties which imposed the limitations upon the federal government, far from supposing that they perished by the exercise of a part of their faculties, were vindicated, by reserving powers in which their deputy, the federal government, could not participate; and the usual right of sovereigns to alter or revoke its commissions.
Even little waffling Jimmy Madison, for his compromises and flaws, set the record straight at times:
With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers (enumerated in the Constitution) connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.
Now, the Tenth Amendment stands on its nose and is a hollow platitude. Hamilton's stooges indeed made the Constitution "a frail and worthless fabric," by liberal construction.
[Edited on 7-30-2005 by Puritanhead]
[Edited on 8-2-2005 by Puritanhead]
[Edited on 8-8-2005 by Puritanhead]
