-
The Anti-Federalists: America's Other Founders
- Reviews in American History
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 28, Number 2, June 2000
- pp. 201-207
- 10.1353/rah.2000.0042
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Reviews in American History 28.2 (2000) 201-207
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The Anti-Federalists:
America's Other Founders
Robert E. Shalhope
Saul Cornell. The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism & the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999. xvi + 327 pp. Appendixes and index. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
Saul Cornell has been studying Anti-Federalist thought for well over a decade. The first fruits of his efforts appeared ten years ago when he published an essay tracing the "changing historical fortunes" of the Anti-Federalists throughout the two hundred years since their epic struggle with their Federalist opponents. 1 With the relatively recent appearance of work by scholars such as Jackson Turner Main, Gordon Wood, Herbert Storing, and others, Cornell concluded that the reputation of the Anti-Federalists had finally been rescued from years of ignominy during which they had been either ignored or vilified by professional historians. Indeed, he believed that even a cursory glance at modern American historiography revealed the demise of the once dominant Federalist orthodoxy; instead, scholars were finally according the Anti-Federalist critique of the Constitution its full due. At long last the Anti-Federalist cause had been rehabilitated.
Tracking the resuscitation of Anti-Federalism's historical reputation was not, however, Cornell's sole purpose in writing this essay; he wished at the same time to critique recent scholarship dealing most directly with Anti-Federalist thought. In his mind the advent of the new social history as well as the emergence of post-modern and post-structural theories of meaning raised serious questions about the manner in which historians approached Anti-Federalism. At a time when social historians were exposing the complexity of an American society divided by race, class and gender, those studying Anti-Federalism persisted in defining the essence of that movement. Regardless of how these historians defined the Anti-Federalists, no matter what diversity they unearthed, they invariably identified the presence of one all-encompassing Anti-Federalist mind. To approach Anti-Federalists as united by a single, homogeneous ideology, or to portray individual spokesmen as the true embodiment of Anti-Federalist philosophy was, he thought, to perpetuate an anachronistic version of the past. Just as scholars were beginning to perceive [End Page 201] the existence of a variety of "original intents" among the Federalists, so too must they recognize that same diversity among Anti-Federalists--a diversity linked inseparably to the specific social and economic milieus of various groups within American society. In order to better comprehend the full complexity of Anti-Federalism, Cornell suggested that historians needed to integrate the methods of the new social history with the insights of post-modernism and post-structuralism. Only then could they describe the complexity of a political discourse containing within it the underlying unities and divergences characteristic of any culture's symbolic universe.
Over the next several years Cornell published additional essays in an attempt to flesh out suggestions offered in this review of Anti-Federalist historiography. In his analysis of the Carlisle (Pa.) Riot in December 1787 he demonstrated quite convincingly that Anti-Federalism in Pennsylvania was clearly not a monolithic ideology. 2 Instead, a tremendous gap separated the ideas espoused by the "plebeian populists" of Carlisle and the elite Anti-Federalist leaders of Philadelphia. Indeed, just as Shays' Rebellion frightened and offended the Federalist leadership in Massachusetts, so too did the Carlisle Riot raise the specter of popular anarchy among the "better sort" of Pennsylvania Anti-Federalists, who were grossly offended by populist notions of democracy.
In essays published subsequent to his analysis of backcountry Anti-Federalism, Cornell began to develop the methodological insights first suggested in his historiographical essay. 3 A pragmatic hermeneutics, he argued, offered the best means of incorporating post-structuralist insights and techniques into an analysis of Anti-Federalist thought. Such an approach would allow historians to explore with greater sensitivity how "the multiple meanings latent in particular texts were actualized when those texts were invoked in different contexts by various individuals and groups in American history." 4 Intertextuality also must...