Over the third quarter of the century, tensions grew, outrage among the colonies grew, and British control and oppression grew, until April 1775, when the war started. The fighting ended in late 1782; a peace treaty was signed in 1783. The colonies were now the United States of America.
Moving away from British persecution was only one half of the process. Moving toward the creation of the new nation’s own government was the other half.
There are many examples of revolutions which succeeded in throwing off cruel governments, only to fail to have prepared a new government to step in and take over. This is why the French Revolution failed. This is why so many postcolonial nations have gained their independence and autonomy, and then become “failed states” or remain locked in a third-world condition.
Throughout the 1700s, the Americans had not only developed vindications for their desire to be independent and sovereign, but rather they had also explored the general principles and possible specific programs for a new government. Some of these concepts had been tested in the settings of the legislatures within the individual colonies. The heritage of the British Parliament also provided a legacy from which both general principles and specific practices could be drawn, possibly modified, and sometimes rejected.
The thinkers who prepared the way for the revolution of 1776, and who shepherded it for several decades afterward, had deep and broad educations. Some of them had traveled widely; others had experience from business, military, political, or agricultural endeavors. Among the many names which belong to this list are Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Patrick Henry. Thomas Jefferson was able to read Greek at an advanced level by his early teenage years. Benjamin Franklin explored nearly every field of human endeavor, making groundbreaking discoveries in physics, and developing a music instrument for which Mozart, Josef Haydn, and Beethoven, among others, composed works. Among the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, a working knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, and other languages was commonplace.
In June 1776, a committee began to write a document which would eventually become the Articles of Confederation. This paper would be a forerunner to the United States Constitution. All thirteen states ratified the finalized text of the Articles of Confederation by February 1781.
By September 1786, it was clear that the Articles of Confederation needed some adjustments. In the course of meetings to determine which changes were needed, starting in May 1787, the revisions were so significant that the document which emerged from these meetings in September 1787 was essentially an entirely new document, the U.S. Constitution.
The final product of the Constitutional Convention was designed to improve on the Articles of Confederation. It included insights from contemporary debates about government: discussions from the writings of John Locke, Montesquieu, and others. The last few centuries of the British experience shaped the document: the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Civil War, the tenure of Cromwell, the Stuart Restoration in 1660, and the British Bills of Rights of 1689. Given that the delegates at the convention had an extensive knowledge of history, the antecedents of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the political thoughts of medieval Scholasticism, are visible in the Constitution.
The Constitution displays a certain universality and timelessness, inasmuch as it draws upon the features of human nature. All people — regardless of the place or era in which they live, regardless of their language, culture, or religion — share certain basic characteristics because they are human beings. They all desire, e.g., peace, freedom, justice, and prosperity. The rare exceptions — the warmonger or the criminal — even have such properties, although hidden behind a mental or moral disease.
The document features various procedural complexities designed to slow the functioning of the government, and thereby avert any scenario in which the government would infringe upon the rights of the individual. The Constitution is a set of rules which the government must obey. The Constitution protects the people from the government.
The majority of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was opposed to slavery and sought its abolition. To create an instability which would eventually demand that attention be paid to the cause of abolition, the famous — or notorious — “three-fifths clause” was inserted into the text. They designed this text to destabilize the institution of slavery. This wording was not, as some suppose, devised to solidify slavery, but rather to undermine it.
Yet having an ethical and principled constitution was only the first step. Not only a structure of offices constitutes a system of government, but rather also the individuals who populate those offices.
The launch of the new federal administration would find its success not only in the equilibrium and justice established by the Constitution, but rather also in the character and quality of the human beings who would fill the various roles in the new structure.
It was in this respect that George Washington’s role became crucial, as historian Ron Chernow writes:
The battle royal over the Constitution exposed such glaring rifts in the country that America needed a first president of unimpeachable integrity who would embody the rich promise of the new republic. It had to be somebody of godlike stature who would seem to levitate above partisan politics, a symbol of national unity as well as a functioning chief executive. Everybody knew that George Washington alone could manage the paradoxical feat of being a politician above politics. Many people had agreed reluctantly to the new Constitution only because they assumed that Washington would lead the first government.
The procedural mechanisms of the legislature, of the executive, and of the judiciary are the skeleton of the system, but the humans in the offices are its flesh and blood. The styles of communication, the abilities to see which compromises are reasonable, and other interpersonal intangibles also partly determine whether an individual is successful in office.
George Washington possessed an ability to see talent and potential, even when it came in unlikely personalities, or was disguised behind immaturity. He also stuck unswervingly to his principles, ready to compromise on negotiables, but never conceding matters of integrity.
It was in this way that the improbably good working relationship between Washington and Alexander Hamilton arose, as Ron Chernow reports:
Perhaps the main reason that Washington and Hamilton functioned so well together was that both men longed to see the thirteen states welded into a single, respected American nation. At the close of the war, Washington had circulated a letter to the thirteen governors, outlining four things America would need to attain greatness: consolidation of the states under a strong federal government, timely payment of its debts, creation of an army and a navy, and harmony among its people. Hamilton would have written the identical list. The young treasury secretary gained incomparable power under Washington because the president approved of the agenda that he promoted with such tireless brilliance. Jefferson had it wrong when he charged that Hamilton manipulated Washington. On fundamental political matters, Washington was simply more attuned to Hamilton than he was to Jefferson. For that reason, Washington willingly served as the political shield that Alexander Hamilton needed as he became America’s most influential and controversial man.
Hamilton had both training and experience in the law. As part of the Constitutional Convention, he understood the document from the inside; he understood the competing viewpoints which had been mixed and welded into the text. He’d been one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays designed to explain the new Constitution to the people, and to persuade them to adopt it.
Had Alexander Hamilton lived two centuries later than he did, he may well have used phrases like “systems theory in political science” — or had such phrases applied to him. With no precedents to follow, he, along with Washington and the other members of the new government, had to implement the mechanisms of the Constitution for the first time. This first generation of elected and appointed officials had to grasp both theory and practice: they needed to be both thinkers and doers.
The dynamics among the first cabinet members were both personal and political. The concept of “cabinet” was not yet clearly defined. Washington met with Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, Jefferson as Secretary of State, and Henry Knox as Secretary of War. The Attorney General, Edmund Randoph, was only marginally associated with the cabinet, while the Vice President, John Adams, was largely kept out of it.
Hamilton was energetic, offering opinions on nearly every aspect of government. Ron Chernow describes Washington as “above the partisan fray” and “detached.” In this context, “partisan” does not refer to formally organized political parties, but informal alliances among various leaders: political parties had yet to be formally created. Washington “was gifted with superb judgment” and was “never a pliant tool in Hamilton’s hands.” Washington “often overrode his treasury secretary.”
In contrast to Hamilton, Washington “had learned to govern his emotions” and “was conciliatory, with an innate sense of decorum.” Although Washington worked well with Hamilton, he “could weigh all sides of an issue and coolly appraise the political repercussions.”
Washington and Hamilton counterbalanced and complemented each other. Hamilton was impulsive and sometimes deliberately provocative. Hamilton’s “excesses” and “rash decisions” ultimately cost him his life.
