The Nation's Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America

chapter 7

chapter 7 seizing nature’s advantages the constitution and the continent, 1783–1789 As with the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, the years following the Revolution transformed the exuberance of victory into trepidation about the future. Peace had initially heightened Americans’ optimistic visions of continental grandeur. Then military demobilization, backcountry violence, constricted economic opportunity, and diplomatic obstructions gave credence to fears that the United States might fumble its potential. To address the nation’s problems, delegates to what became known as the Constitutional Convention trickled into Philadelphia in May 1787 for meetings scheduled to begin on the fourteenth. Their secret discussions through that summer have become legendary, and, today, few historic sites in the United States receive as much attention as their meeting place, Independence Hall. Arguably, only the National Archives’ rotunda—where the ‘‘Charters of Freedom’’ rest, including the Constitution itself—garners more reverence. By modern standards, Independence Hall’s two-story brick structure with a bell tower seems small and quaint. Its modesty might be seen to suggest, like the National Archives exhibit, that the nation’s founders sought timeless, enlightened principles more than imperial grandeur. Yet since the delegates gathered partly out of fear that the United States stood on the precipice of failing to realize a continental destiny, metageographical concepts had a central role in the debates over the Constitution. In fact, they figured so prominently that it is hard to imagine the Constitution’s ratification occurring at all had the document’s backers not been able to invoke these concepts, which were already deeply lodged in people’s minds, to win its approval. The Constitution’s proponents, the Federalists, saw a strong but limited national government over a vast region as a solution to some of the problems the nation faced. Their calls for a new government drew on familiar geo- Seizing Nature’s Advantages ( 261 graphic ideas, but they also challenged traditional political assumptions, including the notion that republics were suitable only for small, homogeneous regions. Perhaps even more daunting was that many opponents of the Constitution—Anti-Federalists, as they came to be known—thought that because the Constitution proposed a small number of representatives, seated in a distant central government, the document provided for representation more virtual than actual. Despite Anti-Federalists’ objections, those accustomed to thinking in metageographical terms and identifying with the continent found consolation in the document’s familiar aspects. In a refrain of rhetoric derived from the scientific debates and geopolitical developments of the previous halfcentury , proponents of the Constitution hammered away at the idea of the continent as a discrete entity that was well suited to, and destined for, political unity. Failure to realize this destiny, they argued, was itself a grave betrayal of the Revolutionary legacy. By extending the federal government’s sphere, the Federalists sought not only to secure the nation from external threats, prevent domestic insurrections , and improve the quality of the nation’s leaders; they also pursued longstanding continental ambitions. Federalist tracts in periodicals and newspapers—including the most famous, the Federalist Papers—hailed the Constitution’s ability to right the nation on its continental trajectory, and they highlighted the nature of the continent to allay Anti-Federalists’ fears of centralized power. Geography, they argued, allowed Americans to form a secure state while keeping the national government inconspicuous and light.∞ Predictably, opponents argued that the Constitution betrayed the Revolution’s aims and that such a republican form of government was ill suited for a large nation. In the end, principles concerning actual representation, which had long been in tension with presumptions of continental identity, fell secondary to prevalent metageographical concerns. Many realized that if the United States seized nature’s advantages, if they made the nation truly continental, it would solidify rule by propertied elites and weaken the voice of ordinary men. Yet a governing structure facilitating a continental nation would also keep alive some of the visions of metageographic grandeur that had sustained struggles before, during, and after the Revolution. Elaborating on the historian Carl Becker’s aphorism that the Revolution was as much a struggle over who shall rule at home as it was over home rule, visions of the continent and assumptions about its nature—in short, ideas about ‘‘home’’—bore directly on the argument over who shall rule. They facilitated the Constitution ’s ratification. 262 ) Creating a Continental Empire tempered optimism In 1783...