Ideological Origins of the New Republic

• Author: Jack Fruchtman
• Profession: Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program in Law and American Civilization at Towson University, Maryland
• Pages: 9-27

American Constitutional History: A Brief Introduction, First Edition. Jack Fruchtman.

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

1

Ideological Origins

oftheNewRepublic

The new republic began in 1781 after the ratification of the Articles of

Confederation and continued when the Americans replaced the Articles

with the United States Constitution 7 years later. In 1789, the people

elected their first federal government. Over the next 15 years, the

founding generation made substantive formal changes: in 1791, the

states adopted the first 10 amendments, known collectively as the Bill

of Rights, followed by two others in 1795 and 1804. The United

States doubled its geographic size in 1803 when the Jefferson

administration purchased the Louisiana territory from France.

The new republic endured slavery, even as some states began its gradual

elimination in the 1780s. Most Americans focused on modifying their

new government and its powers while declining to resolve the future of

slavery. To avoid contention and disunion, the delegates to the constitu-

tional convention did not address it. The words “slavery” or “slave”

appear nowhere in the document. Some abolitionists like Benjamin

Franklin – a former slave owner himself – John Adams, Alexander

Hamilton, and Benjamin Rush attempted to raise the issue, but their

efforts failed. Later leaders like William Lloyd Garrison, who founded

theabolitionist paper, The Liberator, in 1831 and was co‐founder of the

Anti‐Slavery Society, were active throughout the period. It was not until

the end of the Civil War that slavery finally ended.

The period also saw the enhancement of the Supreme Court’s authority

when Chief Justice John Marshall issued his unanimous opinion in

10 The New Republic, 1781–1828

Marbury v. Madison in 1803. Marshall wrote into the Constitution that

the judges’ duty was to interpret the document and to overturn all laws

that conflicted with that interpretation. New institutions were created,

such as the Bank of the United States, and the Court unanimously

approved Congress’s authority to create it. James Monroe became the first

president to issue a signing statement, indicating his ideas of legislation

and how he intended to enforce it.

The Articles of Confederation

and the Constitutional Convention

Five years after the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of

Independence, the states adopted the Articles of Confederation,

though Congress had acted from 1776 as if this had already occurred.

Because the new government lacked sufficient authority to create a

uniform legal system, the states were supreme. The Articles placed all

power, limited though it was, in a single‐house Congress. There was

no separate executive, but only a “president” who chaired a temporary

congressional committee when Congress recessed. Nor did the Articles

provide for a judiciary. Congress itself was the nation’s highest

tribunal.

The problems with the Articles lay embedded in one of the main

themes outlined in the Declaration. Jefferson ended the document

with the resounding words that “these United Colonies are, and of

Right ought to be Free and Independent States … and that as Free and

Independent States, they have 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.” The use of the

term “states” was significant. A state, as the founders understood it,

signified a nation of people organized under one government in a

defined territory. Many leaders of the new 13 states believed their

states were independent, not only of Britain, but of each other, with

the exception of maintaining unity to combat Britain in the

Revolutionary War. Accordingly, with the exception of Connecticut

and Rhode Island, which simply adopted their existing colonial char-

ters as their new constitutions, each state prepared new documents

for internal governance. Because those two states were originally