Great piece, although I do have one (very minor) quibble: the Framers did more than just define the structure of our government in the Constitution; they literally created a new country -- the "united" part of the United States -- out of thin air, on paper.
Interestingly enough, there's a big debate among American constitutionalists over the precise moment the Union was established, a debate that extends all the way back to the founding era itself. Most of the anti-federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans, for example, pushed back hard against even the most clear abdications of state sovereignty under the US Constitution since these states, they argued, constituted themselves as sovereign nations before voluntarily binding themselves to the compact of the Union. Further, they would often argue for a very loose interpretation of the supremacy clause in their view that states themselves remained mostly sovereign entities even with the ratification of the Constitution. The three most famous ideas to derive from this thinking are States Rights, Nullification, and Secession.
However, there was some pretty clear pushback to this thinking. Figures like John Marshall and Abraham Lincoln chided those who held to these ideas as clinging to holdover views on government organization under the Articles of Confederation and ignoring the aspects of political organization in the Declaration of Independence. Marshall established a solid interpretation of the supremacy clause as the bedrock precedent of American legal doctrine, one whose even most generous interpretation only established a dual sovereignty in which states only have power and authority under the provisions of the US Constitution and not self-evidently. Ultimate sovereignty in the American system, Marshall would say, rests in the people as a whole and states are merely quasi-states in the proper sense whose existence is a matter of internal political division and a necessary auxiliary precaution on the power and authority of the federal government, there to check and balance but never empowered to reinterpret, nullify, or destroy the Union and its Constitution. As for the origin point of the union, Lincoln pointed to the language of the Declaration of Independence, which was a " unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" and asserted that the states were never fully separate governing entities in that their act of leaving the British Empire was accomplished as a joint declaration, with a single document establishing political reorganization ratified by an assembled Congress of delegates representing all the states as a whole rather than wholly disparate parts. The colonies, Lincoln would argue, went from the united Colonies of America under the British Empire to the United States of America in an instant with the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution, under this thinking, simply solidified the realities of the Union rather than created the Union.
I personally lean more toward the thinking of Marshall and Lincoln (though I'm a Jeffersonian Republican in almost every other sense), but I concede that their arguments are less secure than they assert. I think in the founding era, it took time for the unwritten constitution of political culture to align with the political realities of the Declaration and the written US Constitution. So, while an argument can be made that, in legal reality, the Union came into existence in 1776, I think it's also clear that many Americans did not think of themselves as belonging to a Union until 1789 and that it took many more years and many more political developments before other Americans came to think in terms of perpetual Union.
Yes. I definitely think John Marshall had the best answer on that question. There were serious arguments on the side of nullification - and they were all wrong.
One would have to ask how the states which were admitted to the Union after 1789 could conceivably be said to be sovereign entities that prefigured the federal government, rather than dependent entities with some delegated power - with the sole (complicated) exception of maybe Texas. I think Marshall and Lincoln were right to chide their opponents on this question.
That said, it’s certainly true that it took time for Americans to see themselves as citizens of the United States of America first, and citizens of their states second. There’s a line from the underrated movie National Treasure (or maybe the second one) where Nick Cage says that before the Civil War Americans said “the United States are,” and after the Civil War, we began saying “the United States is…”
That was a standard assessment of the Civil War when I was young.
Philip Bobbitt had an interesting approach to the issue in "The Shield of Achilles" (which I highly recommend). He traced the historical development of the state after the fall of the Roman Empire through several phases: the ecclesiastical/feudal constitutional order, then the city-state, princely state, kingly state, territorial state, state-nation and then the nation-state.
He argues -- and I think it's highly persuasive -- Lincoln created the American nation-state as a result of the Civil War; before that, we were a state-nation, as were most of the other states in the world at the time, at least the modern ones.
Ironically, at roughly the same time Bismarck was creating the German nation-state in Europe, also largely as a result of war.
Bobbitt contends we've now evolved into the market-state, which is an enormously intriguing thesis. I could never do it justice here even in summary. But if you read his work, I think you'll find it as perceptive as I did.
In any event, I can't agree the Union was formed in 1776. The ratification of the Constitution formed it. And to put a point on it, the Framers placed the capital in its own enclave, carved out of the territory of the states and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, rather than in any of the established cities.
It was so unique, people did indeed have trouble wrapping their heads around it. In the antebellum era it was common, especially in the South, for people to think of their state as their country. Shelby Foote addresses it extensively in his excellent three-volume narrative. After the Civil War, we were in a new constitutional order, even as the Constitution itself remained the same (with the addition of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, of course).
Whether the Framers expected or intended such an evolution is a matter for a long, long debate. I'm sure they hoped what they created would be both adaptable and permanent. I don't think any of them could have articulated at the time a vision of what we've become. The separate concepts of nation, state and country hadn't been developed yet.
I don't think we can say they're fully developed even now. We still use the words interchangeably.
That sounds like an interesting thesis and I think there is something to it - or at least you make a good case for it, but I’ll have to read Bobbitt’s book.
I agree that 1789 is the more important date than 1776, although both played their role.
The one thing I’ll push back on is this:
“ Whether the Framers expected or intended such an evolution is a matter for a long, long debate. I'm sure they hoped what they created would be both adaptable and permanent. I don't think any of them could have articulated at the time a vision of what we've become. The separate concepts of nation, state and country hadn't been developed yet.”
I think they did intend it and they did articulate it. Madison and the other Framers understood themselves to be establishing a new country, which contained within it the various states (whose residents certainly may have been more loyal to their states, but their opinions are not dispositive).
In fact, the point of going from Articles of Confederation to Constitution was to ensure the United States would be a single country, rather than a loose compact of sovereign states. That is what the Federalists saw as their mission, and that is what the Anti-Federalists decried (and why many of them did not support the Constitution).
Creating an entirely new country was indeed the point of the Constitution. And it was unquestionably the purpose of the Framers. But the Constitution didn't create a new nation -- and here's where we start getting tangled in the language -- arguably, it was the Civil War which did the job. At least that was Lincoln's point at Gettysburg.
How we use the word state is another issue. It has two meanings: the individual states of the Union (which is not what I was referring to in "nation, state and country") and the state as an independent political entity (which I was). The Thirteen Colonies became states, and as such thought of themselves as 13 independent little countries, then became the constituent parts of a new country but kept the name states.
Hoo boy.
In any case, I think what the Framers created exceeded even their prodigious imaginations. We've become all three things -- nation, state and country -- within a single constitutional framework. That's amazing. And if we're guilty of smooshing the words together, it's at least understandable to the degree we've actual smooshed the things themselves together.
Interesting. Well, I’ll have to read the book to make sure I fully understand the breakdown between nation, state, and country. But while I don’t underestimate Lincoln’s role, I’m not sure I entirely buy that thesis yet. I’ll have to learn more and mull it over.
Great piece, although I do have one (very minor) quibble: the Framers did more than just define the structure of our government in the Constitution; they literally created a new country -- the "united" part of the United States -- out of thin air, on paper.
Which is absolutely remarkable.
But as I said, great piece. Absolutely spot-on.
Interestingly enough, there's a big debate among American constitutionalists over the precise moment the Union was established, a debate that extends all the way back to the founding era itself. Most of the anti-federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans, for example, pushed back hard against even the most clear abdications of state sovereignty under the US Constitution since these states, they argued, constituted themselves as sovereign nations before voluntarily binding themselves to the compact of the Union. Further, they would often argue for a very loose interpretation of the supremacy clause in their view that states themselves remained mostly sovereign entities even with the ratification of the Constitution. The three most famous ideas to derive from this thinking are States Rights, Nullification, and Secession.
However, there was some pretty clear pushback to this thinking. Figures like John Marshall and Abraham Lincoln chided those who held to these ideas as clinging to holdover views on government organization under the Articles of Confederation and ignoring the aspects of political organization in the Declaration of Independence. Marshall established a solid interpretation of the supremacy clause as the bedrock precedent of American legal doctrine, one whose even most generous interpretation only established a dual sovereignty in which states only have power and authority under the provisions of the US Constitution and not self-evidently. Ultimate sovereignty in the American system, Marshall would say, rests in the people as a whole and states are merely quasi-states in the proper sense whose existence is a matter of internal political division and a necessary auxiliary precaution on the power and authority of the federal government, there to check and balance but never empowered to reinterpret, nullify, or destroy the Union and its Constitution. As for the origin point of the union, Lincoln pointed to the language of the Declaration of Independence, which was a " unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" and asserted that the states were never fully separate governing entities in that their act of leaving the British Empire was accomplished as a joint declaration, with a single document establishing political reorganization ratified by an assembled Congress of delegates representing all the states as a whole rather than wholly disparate parts. The colonies, Lincoln would argue, went from the united Colonies of America under the British Empire to the United States of America in an instant with the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution, under this thinking, simply solidified the realities of the Union rather than created the Union.
I personally lean more toward the thinking of Marshall and Lincoln (though I'm a Jeffersonian Republican in almost every other sense), but I concede that their arguments are less secure than they assert. I think in the founding era, it took time for the unwritten constitution of political culture to align with the political realities of the Declaration and the written US Constitution. So, while an argument can be made that, in legal reality, the Union came into existence in 1776, I think it's also clear that many Americans did not think of themselves as belonging to a Union until 1789 and that it took many more years and many more political developments before other Americans came to think in terms of perpetual Union.
Yes. I definitely think John Marshall had the best answer on that question. There were serious arguments on the side of nullification - and they were all wrong.
One would have to ask how the states which were admitted to the Union after 1789 could conceivably be said to be sovereign entities that prefigured the federal government, rather than dependent entities with some delegated power - with the sole (complicated) exception of maybe Texas. I think Marshall and Lincoln were right to chide their opponents on this question.
That said, it’s certainly true that it took time for Americans to see themselves as citizens of the United States of America first, and citizens of their states second. There’s a line from the underrated movie National Treasure (or maybe the second one) where Nick Cage says that before the Civil War Americans said “the United States are,” and after the Civil War, we began saying “the United States is…”
That was a standard assessment of the Civil War when I was young.
Philip Bobbitt had an interesting approach to the issue in "The Shield of Achilles" (which I highly recommend). He traced the historical development of the state after the fall of the Roman Empire through several phases: the ecclesiastical/feudal constitutional order, then the city-state, princely state, kingly state, territorial state, state-nation and then the nation-state.
He argues -- and I think it's highly persuasive -- Lincoln created the American nation-state as a result of the Civil War; before that, we were a state-nation, as were most of the other states in the world at the time, at least the modern ones.
Ironically, at roughly the same time Bismarck was creating the German nation-state in Europe, also largely as a result of war.
Bobbitt contends we've now evolved into the market-state, which is an enormously intriguing thesis. I could never do it justice here even in summary. But if you read his work, I think you'll find it as perceptive as I did.
In any event, I can't agree the Union was formed in 1776. The ratification of the Constitution formed it. And to put a point on it, the Framers placed the capital in its own enclave, carved out of the territory of the states and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress, rather than in any of the established cities.
It was so unique, people did indeed have trouble wrapping their heads around it. In the antebellum era it was common, especially in the South, for people to think of their state as their country. Shelby Foote addresses it extensively in his excellent three-volume narrative. After the Civil War, we were in a new constitutional order, even as the Constitution itself remained the same (with the addition of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, of course).
Whether the Framers expected or intended such an evolution is a matter for a long, long debate. I'm sure they hoped what they created would be both adaptable and permanent. I don't think any of them could have articulated at the time a vision of what we've become. The separate concepts of nation, state and country hadn't been developed yet.
I don't think we can say they're fully developed even now. We still use the words interchangeably.
That sounds like an interesting thesis and I think there is something to it - or at least you make a good case for it, but I’ll have to read Bobbitt’s book.
I agree that 1789 is the more important date than 1776, although both played their role.
The one thing I’ll push back on is this:
“ Whether the Framers expected or intended such an evolution is a matter for a long, long debate. I'm sure they hoped what they created would be both adaptable and permanent. I don't think any of them could have articulated at the time a vision of what we've become. The separate concepts of nation, state and country hadn't been developed yet.”
I think they did intend it and they did articulate it. Madison and the other Framers understood themselves to be establishing a new country, which contained within it the various states (whose residents certainly may have been more loyal to their states, but their opinions are not dispositive).
In fact, the point of going from Articles of Confederation to Constitution was to ensure the United States would be a single country, rather than a loose compact of sovereign states. That is what the Federalists saw as their mission, and that is what the Anti-Federalists decried (and why many of them did not support the Constitution).
Creating an entirely new country was indeed the point of the Constitution. And it was unquestionably the purpose of the Framers. But the Constitution didn't create a new nation -- and here's where we start getting tangled in the language -- arguably, it was the Civil War which did the job. At least that was Lincoln's point at Gettysburg.
How we use the word state is another issue. It has two meanings: the individual states of the Union (which is not what I was referring to in "nation, state and country") and the state as an independent political entity (which I was). The Thirteen Colonies became states, and as such thought of themselves as 13 independent little countries, then became the constituent parts of a new country but kept the name states.
Hoo boy.
In any case, I think what the Framers created exceeded even their prodigious imaginations. We've become all three things -- nation, state and country -- within a single constitutional framework. That's amazing. And if we're guilty of smooshing the words together, it's at least understandable to the degree we've actual smooshed the things themselves together.
Interesting. Well, I’ll have to read the book to make sure I fully understand the breakdown between nation, state, and country. But while I don’t underestimate Lincoln’s role, I’m not sure I entirely buy that thesis yet. I’ll have to learn more and mull it over.
Excellent point!