Max. M Edling
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195148701
- eISBN:
- 9780199835096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195148703.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Chapter 5 and the corresponding Ch. 10 in Part Three of the book provide background accounts of political development in the USA from the American War of Independence to the Philadelphia Convention, ...
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Chapter 5 and the corresponding Ch. 10 in Part Three of the book provide background accounts of political development in the USA from the American War of Independence to the Philadelphia Convention, and establish that, by 1787, Congress was marked by military weakness and financial insolvency. Here, the background is given to the conflict between the Federalists and the Antifederalists over the military clauses of the US Constitution, a conflict that is analyzed in Chs 6–8 (the debate over the fiscal clauses is analyzed in Part Three of the book). It is argued that two principles frustrated the ability of the Confederation Congress to provide the union with the military capacity it needed to function: first, the sovereignty of the states; and, second, the strong aversion in the American political tradition to a peacetime standing army. In the end, these principles led Congress to become passive in foreign affairs. Ends with an attempt to locate the Federalist demand for an improved military capacity of the national state not in the context of militarism, but in the context of the promotion of commerce.Less
Chapter 5 and the corresponding Ch. 10 in Part Three of the book provide background accounts of political development in the USA from the American War of Independence to the Philadelphia Convention, and establish that, by 1787, Congress was marked by military weakness and financial insolvency. Here, the background is given to the conflict between the Federalists and the Antifederalists over the military clauses of the US Constitution, a conflict that is analyzed in Chs 6–8 (the debate over the fiscal clauses is analyzed in Part Three of the book). It is argued that two principles frustrated the ability of the Confederation Congress to provide the union with the military capacity it needed to function: first, the sovereignty of the states; and, second, the strong aversion in the American political tradition to a peacetime standing army. In the end, these principles led Congress to become passive in foreign affairs. Ends with an attempt to locate the Federalist demand for an improved military capacity of the national state not in the context of militarism, but in the context of the promotion of commerce.
Max. M Edling
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195148701
- eISBN:
- 9780199835096
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195148703.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
In this new interpretation of America's origins, the author argues that during the Constitutional debates, the Federalists were primarily concerned with building a state able to act vigorously in ...
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In this new interpretation of America's origins, the author argues that during the Constitutional debates, the Federalists were primarily concerned with building a state able to act vigorously in defense of American national interests. By transferring the powers of war making and resource extraction from states to the national government, the US Constitution created a nation‐state invested with all the important powers of Europe's eighteenth‐century “fiscal‐military states.” However, the political traditions and institutions of America, whose people had a deeply ingrained distrust of unduly concentrated authority, were incompatible with a strong centralized government based on the European pattern. To secure the adoption of the Constitution, the Federalists needed to build a very different state – they had to accommodate the formation of a powerful national government to the strong current of anti‐statism in the American political tradition. They did so by designing an administration that would be powerful in times of crisis, but would make limited demands on citizens and entailed sharp restrictions on the physical presence of the national government in society. The Constitution was the Federalists’ promise of the benefits of government without its costs – statecraft rather than strong central authority as the solution to governing. The book takes advantage of a newly published edition of the constitutional debates in recovering a neglected strand of Federalist argument, and making a case for rethinking the formation of the federal American state. It is arranged in three main parts: I. Interpreting the Debate over Ratification (four chapters); II. Military Powers (five chapters); and III. Fiscal Powers (five chapters).Less
In this new interpretation of America's origins, the author argues that during the Constitutional debates, the Federalists were primarily concerned with building a state able to act vigorously in defense of American national interests. By transferring the powers of war making and resource extraction from states to the national government, the US Constitution created a nation‐state invested with all the important powers of Europe's eighteenth‐century “fiscal‐military states.” However, the political traditions and institutions of America, whose people had a deeply ingrained distrust of unduly concentrated authority, were incompatible with a strong centralized government based on the European pattern. To secure the adoption of the Constitution, the Federalists needed to build a very different state – they had to accommodate the formation of a powerful national government to the strong current of anti‐statism in the American political tradition. They did so by designing an administration that would be powerful in times of crisis, but would make limited demands on citizens and entailed sharp restrictions on the physical presence of the national government in society. The Constitution was the Federalists’ promise of the benefits of government without its costs – statecraft rather than strong central authority as the solution to governing. The book takes advantage of a newly published edition of the constitutional debates in recovering a neglected strand of Federalist argument, and making a case for rethinking the formation of the federal American state. It is arranged in three main parts: I. Interpreting the Debate over Ratification (four chapters); II. Military Powers (five chapters); and III. Fiscal Powers (five chapters).
Justin B. Litke
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813142203
- eISBN:
- 9780813142234
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813142203.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Taking issue with the way scholarship on American exceptionalism has been conducted for the past few decades, Litke argues that examining the term and idea reveals a profound shift in Americans’ ...
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Taking issue with the way scholarship on American exceptionalism has been conducted for the past few decades, Litke argues that examining the term and idea reveals a profound shift in Americans’ self-conception since the Puritan and founding periods. The dominant social scientific approach to the topic has missed, he argues, the chief elements of its importance to Americans as citizens, namely the reasons America might be unique in the world or in history and what practical ramifications such uniqueness might have for its conduct both at home and abroad. “Imperial American exceptionalism” is thus seen as a development in the American political tradition, a development that has led—with its domestic cognate of centralization, to the erosion of the republican character of the American people. Moving through the most important texts of the colonial, constitutional, Civil War, and Progressive periods, Litke adds to the scholarship in political theory, American political thought, American history, American foreign policy.Less
Taking issue with the way scholarship on American exceptionalism has been conducted for the past few decades, Litke argues that examining the term and idea reveals a profound shift in Americans’ self-conception since the Puritan and founding periods. The dominant social scientific approach to the topic has missed, he argues, the chief elements of its importance to Americans as citizens, namely the reasons America might be unique in the world or in history and what practical ramifications such uniqueness might have for its conduct both at home and abroad. “Imperial American exceptionalism” is thus seen as a development in the American political tradition, a development that has led—with its domestic cognate of centralization, to the erosion of the republican character of the American people. Moving through the most important texts of the colonial, constitutional, Civil War, and Progressive periods, Litke adds to the scholarship in political theory, American political thought, American history, American foreign policy.
Max. M Edling
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195148701
- eISBN:
- 9780199835096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195148703.003.0016
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
The conclusion ends the book with an explication of the Federalists’ idea of an American national state.It starts by pointing out that the ratification of the US Constitution did not mean the end of ...
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The conclusion ends the book with an explication of the Federalists’ idea of an American national state.It starts by pointing out that the ratification of the US Constitution did not mean the end of politics, nor the end of the debate about the future course of the American republic, for now the Federalists faced the next step of state building: creating the institutions of government that would realize their ideas about a national state in America. The mainstream interpretation of the Federalist argument presents it as a call for limited government and protection of minority rights, but this study has offered a different interpretation. It sees the Federalist argument as an attempt to convince the American public about the need to build a powerful state and to explain how this state would work – the idea of an American national state that the Federalists developed during the ratification debate was the result of creative thinking in the face of serious challenges. This conclusion is devoted to an explication of both the challenge that the Federalists faced and the concept of the state they developed, but the basic issue may be summed up as follows: what the Federalists had to do, and what they did, in the debate over ratification, was to develop a conceptual framework that made it possible to accommodate the creation of a powerful national government to the strong anti‐statist current in the American political tradition.Less
The conclusion ends the book with an explication of the Federalists’ idea of an American national state.
It starts by pointing out that the ratification of the US Constitution did not mean the end of politics, nor the end of the debate about the future course of the American republic, for now the Federalists faced the next step of state building: creating the institutions of government that would realize their ideas about a national state in America. The mainstream interpretation of the Federalist argument presents it as a call for limited government and protection of minority rights, but this study has offered a different interpretation. It sees the Federalist argument as an attempt to convince the American public about the need to build a powerful state and to explain how this state would work – the idea of an American national state that the Federalists developed during the ratification debate was the result of creative thinking in the face of serious challenges. This conclusion is devoted to an explication of both the challenge that the Federalists faced and the concept of the state they developed, but the basic issue may be summed up as follows: what the Federalists had to do, and what they did, in the debate over ratification, was to develop a conceptual framework that made it possible to accommodate the creation of a powerful national government to the strong anti‐statist current in the American political tradition.
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226076409
- eISBN:
- 9780226076379
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226076379.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter looks at Richard Hofstadter's book The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It. Richard Hofstadter's return to New York in the autumn of 1946 prefaced his greatest ...
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This chapter looks at Richard Hofstadter's book The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It. Richard Hofstadter's return to New York in the autumn of 1946 prefaced his greatest achievement as a historian. On the strength of the book's stunning popular success, Hofstadter succeeded Charles Beard as the most influential and intellectually significant American historian of his time. The book offered critical and provocative essays about notable public figures, but its underlying themes were responsive to more contemporary concerns. In an era clouded by the Taft-Hartley Act, loyalty oaths, blacklists, and McCarthyism, The American Political Tradition ran against the conservative counterrevolution to the New Deal. Rather than celebrate an unusually successful and conservative continuity in national life, The American Political Tradition drew attention to the rather sharp economic, political, and cultural differences that divided Hoover's America from FDR's. The American Political Tradition is a striking example of revisionist history in the best sense. Rather than succumb to the temptation to render crippling judgments of the nation's heroes, it dissected the politicians without destroying them.Less
This chapter looks at Richard Hofstadter's book The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It. Richard Hofstadter's return to New York in the autumn of 1946 prefaced his greatest achievement as a historian. On the strength of the book's stunning popular success, Hofstadter succeeded Charles Beard as the most influential and intellectually significant American historian of his time. The book offered critical and provocative essays about notable public figures, but its underlying themes were responsive to more contemporary concerns. In an era clouded by the Taft-Hartley Act, loyalty oaths, blacklists, and McCarthyism, The American Political Tradition ran against the conservative counterrevolution to the New Deal. Rather than celebrate an unusually successful and conservative continuity in national life, The American Political Tradition drew attention to the rather sharp economic, political, and cultural differences that divided Hoover's America from FDR's. The American Political Tradition is a striking example of revisionist history in the best sense. Rather than succumb to the temptation to render crippling judgments of the nation's heroes, it dissected the politicians without destroying them.
