Yes, “of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”
The people of the existing states wished to make them–the states–more unified. The states (at least the Thirteen) came before the Union.
Moreover, the uses of the words “delegated” and “reserved” in the Tenth Amendment certainly suggest that powers reside first in the states and the people (the state constitutions possibly expressing the basis of their empowerment by the people), sometimes delegated from them to the federal government, and never the other way round.
But, “We, the people,” is not, “We, the peoples.” There was a national identity that superseded the colonial/state political zones of power. And that nationality was Anglo-Saxon for 120 years after the War for Independence. Arguably the USA is a cultural extension of the UK, just in republican form.
I never made the claim that the USA was only a military alliance. I made the statement that the USA started off primarily that way.
And looking back, it did. Any objective overview of the situation supports that notion…
…except this one, because it’s absolutely incorrect.
Even up until the civil war, people were far more dedicated to their states than the Federal Government. Example, you say? Robert E. Lee fought for his home state, Virgina, not for the cause of the confederacy. Lee was offered command of the Union Army but felt more attached to his state than the Union (cite).
That, in and of itself, should prove to most reasonable people there wasn’t a single “American” identity (except in as much as “we” aren’t “them” provides a cultural identity) at least until after the civil war. You certainly can’t say they had a single “American Identity,” when to some extent or another then civil war was fought over that. Common misconception, and one that has been discussed to great lengths on those forum: the Civil War, while sparked over slavery, was about a lot more than slavery. While the war itself likely would’ve been averted if the north had never pushed the issue of ending slavery (the south likely wouldn’t have peacefully seceded slavery because so much of their economy relied on it – even if much of that benefit was in the hands of very few rich elites), it wasn’t the only cause of tension and was by far the issue that was easiest to rally people for/against.
ETA: and I wouldn’t hang my argument, no matter what side I was on, on the idea that a grammatical fuck up of a sentence that includes “more perfect” can prove my point.
I can see the argument, but I have never seen any source from any of the founders which even remotely hinted that they ever thought about Switzerland. I would be willing to acknoiwledge if I got that wrong, but AFAIK, it wasn’t even on their mental radar at all, not even distantly. Rome and Greece were, and even the Iroquois tribes.
dracoi: No. No, not even close. There was never an attempt to look at the U.S. as a nation-state, or the individual states as nation-states. The USA has always been a state.collection thereof - but never a nation-state.
You might also cite the Declaration’s “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands…”
Sure, there was obviously a nascent pan-colonial identity, though in political terms it seemed to develop awfully quickly following the French and Indian War. I’m not sure this qualifies as a national identity yet. It’s something like the nascent sense of global citizenship we have today–nice in theory, but not what most people will identify with at brass tacks.
Wait, so there was a separate and unified national identity in the United States-to be, before independence, and yet this wholly distinct nation was still only a cultural extension of the UK for a century thereafter?
Doesn’t make much sense to me. I’d argue that the identity began to differentiate culturally first, with the conditions of the frontier on the one hand and the presence of enslaved Africans in settled areas on the other ensuring a new path.
Which as I’ve pointed out pretty much proves the point. The United States Constitution defines what powers the states have - the state constitutions do not define what power the United States has. And that’s why the United States is sovereign over the states and not vice versa.
Let’s leave aside the original thirteen states for a moment. Let’s consider Ohio. If the federal giovernment is a compact between independent nations, then Ohio must have been an existing independent nation when it joined the United States in 1803. Do you feel that’s the case? Was Ohio an independent nation joining an alliance of other independent nations?
It wasn’t necessary to provide a cite that Robert E. Lee didn’t fight on the Union side. But thanks.
As for dedication, what does that mean? Dedication doesn’t have any legal weight. There are people in Brooklyn who feel more dedicated to Brooklyn than they do to the United States but that doesn’t make Brooklyn a country.
As I’ve pointed out in a previous thread, people who use the modern sense of perfect for their understanding of that sentence don’t know what they are talking about.
Wills has also written that before the Civil War, most people wrote “the United States are…” but after the War they wrote “the United States is…” Until the War many people, including many founders, thought of the states as being in a loose alliance which could be repealed and of the federal government as a convenience whose dictates could be ignored or repealed if they interferred at a state level.
Nobody really knew what the United States meant when it was created (or, as they would have said, when they were created). It emerged and evolved over time into the form it has today. Everybody at the beginning had individual understandings and definitions of its character. You can’t say what the founders thought they were creating: they didn’t know.
Oh, and of course the Civil War was about slavery. Slavery was the defining issue of the country for the entire 19th century. It affected every federal move and decision. The War didn’t come about because the North tried to end slavery. (The North never tried anything remotely like that.) It came about because the South wanted to extend slavery (into the territories, into the North through the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision, into Congress through censorship of talk about slavery, into every aspect of American life: even haters of Negroes couldn’t swallow that). The South caused the War overtly. They were not victims; they were perpetrators.
Obviously Ohio wasn’t an independent nation before it joined the Union, any more than West Virginia was.
The reason that it doesn’t fit perfectly is simple – this is the real world. No solution will fit all scenarios perfectly.
The States hold the power to alter the Federal Government, not the other way around. There’s no constitutional authority for re-drawing state boundaries, for instance (barring “Disputes between states”). This means that, except in the instance where Ohio and Michigan have a dispute over borders (or any two states), the Government can’t step in and redraw interstate boundaries.
Why is this important? Because it prevents the federal government from splitting Ohio into three states, effectively tripling its senatorial representation (and if drawn correctly, giving as many as 4 seats to one party).
Now, that’s just an example, but an important one.
On the other hand, the States can alter the federal government through amendments. They, collectively, hold the power to increase, decrease or entirely abolish the Federal Government – and there isn’t shit that the Federal government can (legally) do about it.
Save your smart assery for someone who thinks you’re cute.
The cite was no more about which side Lee fought for than it was about his hair color. It was about why he fought for that side, and I think you know it.
Dedication is what matters, when you’re talking about national identity.
Legally, it’s clear that the Union was just that – a Union of independent States. Culturally, it’s clear that the majority of the population of each Colony/State was more loyal to their neighbors, and Colony/State, than they were to Crown, Country or Continent.
People today tend to forget (as I assume people yesterday tended to forget) that in the past, people had drastically different belief systems. Not just religiously or politically, but in their life. It wasn’t 8 hours in an airport from New York to Georgia. It wasn’t 14 hours in a car down the East Coast. It was days, sometimes weeks, to travel to places we take for granted. And it was often dangerous. There was no National Identity at the time, because there was barely a nation at all. Nationalism, in any sense, didn’t really begin until the 1900s. It’s hard for someone from CT to identify with someone from Wisconsin when it’s almost as difficult for them to travel there as it is to France – maybe more so.
I did, and do, understand the difference – I was trying to be funny.
Thank you, I was trying to pull that anecdote out of my head, but couldn’t. (I kept saying something like “We, the peoples of these United States,”/“We, the people of the United States of America.” and I knew that wasn’t correct.)
That’s not entirely true – some founders had very clear ideas of what they thought the Union should represent.
The problem is that those views were often different, and conflicting.
You’re correct in (almost) everything. You and I disagree on a few points, but I should take special care to note that I spoke far too quickly earlier (rather, typed too quickly), and in an attempt to oversimplify, I was simply wrong.
The North did not attempt to “end” slavery (at least, outright). It certainly didn’t attempt to ban the practice on a Federal level.
The war was precipitated by the conflict centering around slavery. However, my contention is that there was conflict aside (although not necessarily separate) from slavery. That conflict was both economic and cultural – however, slavery was a major part of both in the South, and that makes drawing the line between conflicts that would’ve happened anyway, and conflicts that were either too minor (without slavery) or peripheral to ever fester into anything other than shouting or angry faces much, much more difficult.
As for extending slavery: Yes, the South wanted to extend it to the new territories, but to their view, that was simply a way to prevent “the North” from being able to ban slavery down the line with a Constitutional Amendment (with more states being Slave States, less states would vote yes on that issue). To “the South,” new territories without states were anti-slavery votes.
As for the South causing the war, and being the perpetrators – as much as you can categorize any group (short of “Nazi”), I agree. The blame is to be laid at the feet of the South.
Sure, the state constitutions don’t explicitly grant power to the federal government, but then, look at Europe: Does France’s constitution, or Germany’s, grant power to the European Union? Again, the current European Union is a lot like the US under the Articles of Confederation. Or maybe even more tightly bound, in some ways: I think, for instance, that the States under the Articles all had their own money.
Todderbob, I really don’t see how you can claim that the founders saw themselves as the representatives of thirteen seperate countries. The thirteen colonies were obviously British colonies - that was the point they were meeting to discuss. But when they decided to declare independence they did it as a single unit with one declaration, not as thirteen seperate units.
And as I pointed out above, in that declaration they gave their views as to what defined an independent nation - they said that a free and independent nation has “full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do”. And then that same group of men formed a government in which those powers were explicitly assigned to the national government and not the thirteen states. If they thought the states were all free and independent nations why didn’t they give them the powers that they said defined free and independent nations?
They did give them those powers – in the Confederate States. However, after the CSA’s massive failure, it became obvious that some sovereign rights needed to be delegated to the Central government in order for it to remain functional. See my other post:
Te confederation was a failed international organization. Don’t think of it as the predecessor to the current USA, think of it as the predecessor to the pre-civil war USA. After the civil war, the federal government grew from an interstate organization that dealt with foreign relations and attempted to settle interstate disputes into a strong, central power.
It’s perfectly possible to have independent States who surrender certain bits of sovereignty to a Union (or organization) and still retain most levels of Sovereignty. NATO, an international treaty organization, in theory removes the Sovereign Rights of the USA and England to declare war or peace. There’s no real backing to that (any more than there’s backing to international law in general), however there was no real backing behind the CSA, and that’s what lead to the USA.
The Federal Government of the United States had a charter – the Constitution. As generally interpreted at the time, it was fairly binding. Hell, they couldn’t ban alcohol without a constitutional amendment in 1920. Since then (and even before), our Federal Government has grown massively (really, take a look at relative spending levels) in scope and power.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining or passing a value judgement.
Looking back historically, I think the North had every right to attack the South (as I think the South had every right to attempt to secede from the Union), however not for the reasons most people think. I think the Constitution didn’t prohibit the States from seceding, so it was within the States Rights™ (see Amendment 10). However, I also think that its within a sovereign nations (or unions) right to attack what it interprets to be a threat (and clearly they were, as they fired on Union Troops), or in order to remedy a civil rights violation – both criteria were met to such an extent that no one, at least to my mind, would state the South had a legal/moral leg to stand on.
I’m also not complaining about the expansion in scope/power of the Federal Government – it’s a necessity of the times we live(d) in. The 1900’s required a strong central government, it was a time of ridiculous industrial expansion, military aggression and international turmoil – moreso than today by far in my opinion. Although I do wish that we could re-structure the federal government in a way that reflected the modern necessity, rather than just trying to use a 200 year old door/lock/key in a new frame.
I may be “all over” the map, but that’s because it’s a complex issue which warrants more explanation and forethought than simply “no they didn’t!” It requires you to understand the context and history behind the decisions that were made.
It was you who said the following, wasn’t it?
Todderbob, I really don’t see how you can claim that the founders saw themselves as the representatives of thirteen seperate countries.
I was trying to explain how the founders understood the world that was going on around them when the constitution was ratified in 1788, and what they thought of their respective constituencies (in regards to their independence) by explaining their decisions, and decision making processes leading up to that point. In order to understand their opinions, both in 1776 and onward, it’s useful to examine the entirety of history. Sometimes hindsight lends clarity that’s not available through examining exclusively contemporary works. It’s the same reason that the civil war was brought up (that was this thread, right?).
I don’t buy the idea that the notion of an American identity is something that only grew up after the Civil War. Pre-Civil War, the inhabitants of the United States certainly did think of themselves as “Americans”, as a nation or a people. Tocqueville talked about the American character; as early as 1838 Abraham Lincoln spoke of “the American people” and “a nation of freemen”; Daniel Webster identified himself as an American (“I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American”); Manifest Destiny was spoken of in terms of “the American people”; and I’m sure you could find many, many other antebellum references to “Americans” or “the American people”.
The American people lived in “states” which were united in a federal government which had a lot more limited powers than it does now; but “state” and “nation” need not necessarily coincide. Sparta, mentioned above, didn’t just have “a lot of autonomy”; it was a completely sovereign and independent state (as were Athens, Corinth, Thebes, and many others). However, the inhabitants of the various Greek city-states were also conscious of a collective identity as “Greeks” (Hellenes)–Athenians, Spartans, and so on–as opposed to Persians, Egyptians, Babylonians, or any other group of “foreigners”.
The Greek example shows that questions of “national” identity and patriotism can be complicated; at what was arguably the height of “Greek” identity, the Persian Wars, some Greek city-states sided with the Persian Empire; and the Persian Wars were followed by the Peloponnesian Wars in which Greeks waged brutal war against other Greeks. I’m sure antebellum American identity was complicated and there was a competing idea of primary loyalty being to one’s individual state rather than to the Union as a whole. Nonetheless, the American states (unlike the Greek city-states, the Italian city-states, or the German states before 1871) by and large had no real experience as actual sovereign entities. As noted, most American states were formed by the Union rather than the other way around, and the experience of colonizing the West was a collective one, in which it was early on established that rather than Virginia or Connecticut colonizing some particular area the West would be settled by Americans in general (with, of course, a major and very consequential regional divide between areas settled from the free states and areas settled from the slave states). Even the Civil War was not actually fought “state against state”, but by two federal governments (with, on the whole, very similar constitutions).
I’ve quoted what the actual people who were setting up the country said and wrote in 1776. You’ve been giving your opinion about events that happened eighty years later.
It’s also sadly true that Lee, as said earlier, and the other confederate leaders and military saw themselves as citizens of their states first and America a distant second, if at all. (You quote only Northerners, tellingly.)
Americans certainly saw themselves as having a separate and distinct identity when contrasting themselves to Europeans. Internally, however, the identities were muddier and the North/South split overwhelmed everything. That split had to be eradicated before America became a single identity and single federalized country.