Notes
212 / Conclusion can be no settled question, no unquestioned rule, no ruling power, and no powerless citizen. Therefore, America’s political leaders have simply dismissed public opinion as irrational, ill-informed, and the product of demagogues , because in so doing they are provided with a justification for ignoring public opinion and preserving stability. America’s political leaders knew all too well that when the people did not confine their actions to the realms of military defense, epideictic celebration, and political party— when they tried to enter their opinions into the legislature’s deliberations— there was chaos and instability. Founding Fictions has used an interdisciplinary approach to tell the story of how Americans invented, debated, and enacted American republican political theory between 1764 and 1845, and in so doing it has approached political theory as a combination of poetical, rhetorical, and dialectical language . Thinking of political theory as political fiction has allowed us to analyze how and why the nation’s political theory was constructed against other alternatives and how it responded to the prevailing ideas in circulation within its immediate context. This approach has allowed us to think about the relationship between America’s political theory and the stories Americans tell themselves about their government; it has also highlighted the inherently constructed nature of political theory. We found that sometimes the nation’s political fiction accurately reflected the nation’s political theory and constitution, and at other times we found an ironic gap between what was portrayed as the nation’s political theory and the logic of its existing constitution. We found that the nation developed, and its political leaders and citizens strategically deployed, specific political fictions because they found them useful for coping with specific contextual constraints . We found that America’s political fiction was the result of the people’s imagination, which meant that it was not an unquestionable elite discourse but rather the joint creation of Americans. From the critiques of savvy political observers like Mercy Otis Warren, of idealistic romantic republicans like Thomas Jefferson, and of apprehensive Anti-Federalists like Brutus we learned that any political fiction could be judged based upon whether and how it was dialogic, authored, circulated , debated, ratified, and open, and also that political fictions could be said to have more citizen consent when they met more, rather than fewer, of these six characteristics. Our analysis of the Revolution’s republican fiction found that despite the nation’s inexperience with republican constitution creation, there was a strong sense of dialogism between political leaders and citizens, because without the support of the mass of the people political leaders would have certainly been hung as traitors. The years between 1764 and 1776 witnessed Americans debating, ratifying, and Conclusion / 213 knowingly circulating the truths of the republican fiction they jointly authored . While we could not say that the construction of the Revolution’s republican fiction was perfectly dialogic, authored, circulated, debated, ratified , or open, it did appear to have enough citizen consent for Committees of Correspondence and Safety to effectively manage the government after the collapse of the monarchical fiction and motivate citizens to participate in the war effort. The new Constitution was overtly constructed in a secret enclave in 1787, but it did go through a rigorous process of debate and ratification— even if only a few Americans were actually allowed to vote on it. The Constitution was decidedly authored; indeed, the prestige of the Constitutional Convention had been used as one of the more persuasive arguments in its favor. The new Constitution was also specifically open to amendment and was overtly and knowingly circulated. This much is true of the nation ’s new Constitution, but what can we say about the nation’s new tragic republican fiction? Was it also predominantly dialogic, authored, circulated, debated, ratified, and open? It is difficult to say with certainty whether or not citizens accepted that they were tragic victims rather than romantic heroes, especially because of the accusations of heresthetic rhetrickery during the ratification process and because “vernacular republicanism” endured well into the 1790s. Yet, while romantic citizenship may not have been eradicated, citizens accepted the new Constitution and allowed it to provide the stability that the nation’s political elite desired. The way Americans responded to the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the nation’s Jubilee conflated romantic and tragic citizenship and gave America’s republican fiction divine sanction, but it did not change the nation’s Constitution. There is a sense in...
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