SOURCE: Abbott, Philip. “What's New in the Federalist Papers?” Political Research Quarterly 49, no. 3 (September 1996): 525-45.

[In the following essay, Abbott focuses on Publius as a storyteller, using narrative as a central means for advancing his argument in The Federalist Papers.]

The centrality of the Federalist Papers in American political thought is indisputable. Even the most severe critics of Publius grant its monumental importance as a “new explanation of politics, of whose beauty and summetry the Federalists themselves only gradually became aware” and as a “masterly statement” in support of a literal or at least ideological coup d'état (Beard 1913; Wood 1969). For others, the Federalist Papers is a sacred text, a text which captured the “thought and intention of those few men who fully grasped what the ‘assembly of demi-gods’ was doing” and which Americans return to recapture “a level of thoughtfulness about fundamental political alternatives” (Diamond 1983: 88). The uniqueness of the Federalist Papers is thus tethered to an act, the act of founding. The act certainly produced some important incoherences in interpretation (multiple authorship; inability to pursue lengthy philosophical argument; repetition; the frequent use of “quick kill” in argumentation) but it is foremost the source of its power and authority. For without a narrative that places the Federalist Papers closely, if not causally, to the constitutional convention and the successful ratification, the text would lose much of its capacity to dominate American political discourse. Its arguments would be ones based upon a rejected and archaic document and its predictions and explanations could never be tested (much as is the status of the arguments of the antifederalists).

The American founding is thus the Federalist Papers's central claim to newness defined as uniqueness. Reading the Federalist Papers after the founding always reopens this newness since no student can fail to appreciate the exceptional opportunity which Publius confronted. “You are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America” was Hamilton's initial line in #1 (Cooke 1961: 3).¹ Yet this founding moment is an ancient event by American standards and the modern reader is at the same time forced to consider the distance between the founding moment of Publius and is at once driven to treat the text as an “old” one. Its continuing “essential hegemonic function” (Ferguson 1986: 25) in accounting for the present contours of American politics may be judged benevolent or negative but its capacity to determine events gives the text a venerable status even if it might be a begrudging one. This conjunction of new/old, including various definitions of the terms, has been the driving force in interpretations of the Federalist Papers as readers' emphases involve considerations of Publius' “practicality” and “realism' (that is, his appreciation for the old) and the novelty (“newness”) of his solutions to the perennial problems of republics and governments in general as well as assessments as to whether Publius forged a major break between republicanism (“old”) in his support of a “new” liberal ideology.²

It is this fascination with what is old and new in the Federalist Papers that, I think, is the key to interpreting this exceptional text for it is on precisely these terms that Publius himself framed his arguments as did those who opposed the second founding. In the broadest of terms, the antifederalists argued that the Constitution was new in various negative senses as untested, exotic, and unknown while Publius contended that the Constitution must be seen as the result of “oldness” since it reflected long historical experience, and he constantly criticized the utopianism of its detractors. Yet the antifederalists still insisted upon the novelity of the American revolution and the American experience and criticized the Constitution as a work which oozed a lack of faith in republican government and hence was “old,” so suspicious, in fact, of the people's capacity to govern that the convention created a system which “squints towards monarchy” (Kenyon 1985: 257). Moreover, Publius frequently emphasized the newness of his “science of politics” which was unavailable in important respects to the ancients and castigated those who preached “gloomy doctrines, which predict the impracticality of a national system” (#23, 151). Even the pseudonym Publius epitomizes old/new in the Federalist Papers. The authors wrote under the “old” name of the founder of the Roman Republic but did so “as a rather proud, and radical, innovator within that tradition” (Prangle 1985: 582). In fact, a passage which illustrates the deftness and complexity of Publius' employment of the terms new/old can be found in #14 in which he recasts the debate by dividing newness into experimentation required to meet new conditions and the rashness entailed in refusal to change:

Harken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what is impossible to accomplish. No my countrymen, shut your ears against this unhallowed language. Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys; the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defence of their sacred rights, consecrate their union, and excite horror at the idea of becoming aliens, rivals, enemies. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rending us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties and promote our happiness. But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for manners, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience (#14, 89)?

It is the thesis of this essay that these defenses and critiques of things both old and new in the Federalist Papers are explored through a set of “stories” or narratives about America.³ This is not to say that Publius does not probe the old/new in theoretical format. Rather, Publius' success in winning the debate over oldness/newness can be most vividly discerned in terms of his excellence as a storyteller of the new for it is from this perspective that we can see how he captures the new and becomes its authority. His stories are a mixture of history—ancient and modern, scripts of the convention and the ratification (in which he assigns himself a leading role) and futuristic scenarios. When we read the Federalist Papers we participate in his acts of storytelling, appreciating and replicating the pairings of old and new he created as we attempt to add chapters to his narratives. Since as Americans we must all begin with Publius' stories, because of his authority as founder, he forces us to conceive America as an exceptional (“new”) narrative of old and new.

What are the stories that Publius uses to encase his arguments of oldness/newness? First there is the account of the founding and its relationship to those in the past. Then there are what can be called “disaster scenarios” should the founding not materialize. The disaster scenario is paired against a different story of the American future, America as a “rising nation,” if only the constitution were ratified. Finally there is the story of how in detail the constitution will function in the future which includes Publius' reversions of critics' disaster scenarios. These sets of stories were not accidental. Taken as a whole, they can be conceived as a genre of basic narratives that were distilled from republican political thought. The fascination with beginnings, the tragic history of republics and the efforts to assure their continuity across time constituted the core of the republican project.

Overlayered with the adoption of these narratives was also a liberal one as well, one which told a story of escape from history by a commercial people blessed with exceptional historical circumstances. Thus Publius' adeptness in merging republican and liberal themes which has so confounded his critics and charmed his supporters is reflected in this new mixture of narratives he tells or retells.

FOUNDING STORIES

The Federalist Papers abounds with stories of historical foundings in the ancient republics—in Crete, Athens, Sparta, Rome. It was Publius' task to connect these narratives with his immediate situation in order to present a story of the American founding. Three elements were interlocked to form such a grand narrative of the convention. The first involved the assertion that the Articles of Confederation did not constitute a founding at all or one so flawed that it did not deserve to be included in any American founding narrative. Thus Hamilton in his introductory number, when he poses the exceptional moment which faces the American people, does not emphasize that this is a second chance. Jay follows by asserting that America was already one nation (Providence had granted Americans “one connected country … one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manner and customs”) but not one state. The time was “inauspicious” during the revolution for such a creation and hence “found to be greatly deficient and inadequate” (#2, 10).

Publius argues with vivid examples in what we call the disaster scenario that the Confederation is for all practical purposes simply a way station for thirteen states or several confederations and hence the proposed Constitution represents the founding of America. Moreover, since the Confederation had never been approved by the people as a whole it was fundamentally unsound: “The fabric of the American Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE” and hence the challenge which confronted Americans as to whether foundings could be based upon “reflection or choice” and not “accident and force” still had not been met (#22, 146; #1, 3).⁴

This constant push toward a narrative which placed the Constitution as the only real founding moment is supported by Publius' contention that its opponents were unwilling to conceive of America in terms of “any general system” and that the “great and radical vice” of the Confederation was its reliance upon states in their “corporate or collective capacities” for legislation (#1, 7; #15, 93). Hence there was drawn a newness to the Constitution in respect to the founding of other republics. Madison even goes so far as to suggest that the founding of all the ancient republics was flawed because they failed to found stable arrangements among themselves. The ancient and modem examples of confederation—the Lycian and Achaean Leagues, the Lacedaemonian Confederacy and Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands—each experimented with different arrangements among members but each collapsed into “anarchy among its members” or “tyranny in the head” (#18, 117). At best then the Confederation was an “old” political structure and its striking resemblances to its predecessors confirmed that such arrangements characterized by a “sovereignty over sovereigns, a government over government” were “a solecism in theory” and “in practice … subversive of the order and ends of civil polity …” (#20, 128-29).

There is thus in Publius' narrative a division of the founding of collections of republics between those old forms—confederations—which were numerous and uniform failures and the founding proposed by the constitutional convention which was unique and capable of breaking this long string of ruinous experimentation. Hamilton thus begs Americans: “Let us at last break the fatal charm which has too long seduced us from the paths of felicity and prosperity” (#15, 92).

Adding to the narrative which placed America in a position which other republics had also faced, Publius also creates a script for the ratification debate itself. Foundings are exceptional moments in the history of nations, Hamilton tells readers in #1. The massive political changes which are imminent loosen “a torrent of angry and malignant passions” (#1, 5). There are classes of citizens who resist change for fear that under a new constitution their power will be diminished. There are others who quickly perceive there is extraordinary political opportunity opened up to them. They hope to prey upon the uncertainty of the moment to force political projects which will provide outlets for their drive for power. Add to this, says Publius, personal animosities, party rivalry and “the honest errors of minds led astray by preconceived jealousies and fears” (#1, 4).

Foundings in republics present even more problems. Publius predicts that the “noble enthusiasm for liberty” in republics will make citizens especially suspicious of the “enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government” and warns that during this exceptional moment the love of liberty is “apt to be infected with the spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust.” Moreover, “history will teach us” that those who lead the people in these suspicions will use them as a “mask” for their ambition: “… those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career, by paying an obsequious court to the people …” (#1, 6). Thus Publius warns us in this narrative of the immediate future that complaints about the Constitution based upon “republican jealousy” are “old” ones which reappear in each founding moment. They are either “blameless” suspicions (such as those regarding the status of state militias, a bill of rights, or rotation in office discussed later in the Federalist Papers) or they are expected concerns fueled and magnified by ambitious and untrustworthy leaders. Publius can be patient (if patronizing) in regard to the former. For example, concerning the fear that “some favorite class of men in exclusion of others” might be the object of the provision of federal control of regulating elections, Hamilton replies: “Of all chimeral suppositions, this seems to be the most chimeral” (#60, 404). As to the later, Publius is always poised to attack as “wanton” and “malignant” any assertion that the proposed constitution constituted a “conspiracy against the liberties of the people” (#85, 589).

The effect of following this script, in which complaints about liberty are predicted and defined as misguided apprehensions on the part of citizens or the result of fishing in troubled waters on the part of elites, places Publius in a “new” role in this founding. Having grasped the “accumulated experience of the ages,” he speaks in a voice new to the founding moment. “I frankly acknowledge to you my convictions, and I will freely lay before you the reasons on which they are founded,” says Publius in the introductory essay. He concludes in #85 that while he might have been guilty of occasional “intemperances of expression” he had addressed himself “purely to your judgments, and have studiously avoided those asperities which are apt to disgrace disputants of all parties, and which have not been a little provoked by the language and conduct of the opponents of the constitution” (#1, 6; #85, 589). Publius thus offers himself as a new guide to the founding new in history as he presents arguments as calmly and fairly as he can.⁵

The danger of the founding moment in history and in America in the present is repeated throughout the Federalist Papers. In #49, for example, Publius offers a critique of Jefferson's proposal in his Notes on the State of Virginia which suggests that whenever two of three branches of government agree by a two-thirds vote that a new constitution is warranted, a convention be called. Madison admits that “like every thing from the same pen,” Jefferson's plan “marks a turn of thinking original” and that the proposal “seems strictly consonant with republican theory which reserves the right of the people to “new-model the powers of government” (#49, 338-39). But Publius worries first about the plan itself (Would the legislative branch overwhelm the others? Would an executive-judicial coalition be thwarted by men at the convention who would likely come from the ranks of the legislature “whose conduct was arraigned”?) and then about the likelihood and consequences of “frequent appeals” for ever more foundings Governments would be deprived “of that veneration, which time bestows on everything, without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would not possess requisite stability.” Only in a nation of philosophers should his caution be discarded, an occurrence “as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato.” And then there are the passions awakened in every founding moment. Such “experiments are of too ticklish a nature to be unnecessarily multiplied” (#49, 340-41). Even a more limited and “periodic” mechanism for constitutional revision like the “novel experiment” with the Council of Censors in Pennsylvania is rejected as a practice which excites passions to a dangerous level. Publius, who embraces the new in several important respects is anxious to enclose this moment as quickly as possible. Any amendments would “prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and expose the union to the jeopardy of successive experiments” (#85, 591). He cites the repeated failures of the United Netherlands to effect a founding beyond confederacy and urges readers to note the “melancholy and monitory history” of “this unhappy people” (#20, 128).

Foundings are dangerous. Their outcomes are unpredictable; flawed constitutions eventually bring down republics and republican confederations. Thus Publius supports this founding moment only because he firmly believes in its uniqueness among rare events. In #37 he contends that the Convention was a great “exception” to the “dark and degrading pictures” of other foundings. The Founders' burdens were magnified by the special task of combining energy in government “with the inviolable attention due to liberty, and to the Republican form” (#37, 233). Locating a reasonable line of demarcation between the relationship between state and national governments, between large and small states, among branches of government within these constraints challenged the limits of human understanding. Moreover, the Convention enjoyed to “a very great degree, an exemption from the pestilential influence of party animosities” and a “deep conviction of the necessity of sacrificing private opinions and partial interests to the public good” (#37, 239).

The newness of the American founding was thus “astonishing.” The Convention had reached the limits of human understanding in matters even more difficult to fathom than even those of natural science and done so without the usual motivations of party and self-interest. So certain is Madison of the perfection of the work of the Convention, if one were only to ignore outcomes “planned” in a philosopher's “closet” or “Imagination,” that he cautiously suggests divine intervention: “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it, a finger of that Almighty hand which has so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of revolution” (#37, 238). Publius' role as “new guide” provided him with a role safely distant from one which asserted that he (in conjunction with the other members of the Convention or even himself in his position as prime theoretical expositor) was the source but the connection could be unveiled after its success.

Madison was well aware of the fact that the secrecy of the Convention's deliberations was a subject of extreme suspicion on the part of the antifederalists (that “dark conclave”) and his narrative of the Convention's newness is thus based upon the assertion that the outcome of the Convention, given the extraordinary obstacles, “must have enjoyed” an “exemption” from party animosity. It is noteworthy that Madison reviews none of the various proposals offered during the Convention but rather simply challenges its opponents to imagine what kind of agreements they would be able to produce at a second convention. In fact, in #38 he further emphasizes the newness of the founding by noting that the Convention was a group undertaking rather than the usual route of a founding by “some individual citizen of pre-eminent wisdom and approved integrity.” Indeed founders such as Minos, Theseus, Draco, Solon, Lycourgus, Romulus, and Numa also employed violence and myth to effect their results rather than submit their recommendations to the people.

The founding narrative that Publius thus constructs teems with the newness of “American improvements”: the Constitution was a new kind of founding in the history of republics since it “new modelled” a “general system”; Publius is a “new” guide to the founding free of commentaries derived from the “angry and malignant passions” he predicts will emerge; the Convention surmounted “the infirmities and depravities of the human character” which have afflicted previous efforts at founding and relied upon ratification “by the people themselves.” These evocations of newness assume striking proportions because Publius speaks from a decidedly cautious general perspective. He recognizes the “dark and degrading pictures” of foundings and the passions which founding moments unleash. Publius is very reluctant to recommend newness other than at this precise historical moment. He argues that a reverence for laws requires the rarity of foundings, the success of the convention participants themselves was the result of the fact that they were animated by a “despair” of any “new experiments,” the consequence of amendment would “expose the union to the jeopardy of successive experiments.”

DISASTER AND RISING NATION SCENARIOS

Publius' account of the founding is centrally tied to what he sees as its alternative. Disaster scenarios, which occupy most of the first fourteen numbers and are repeated throughout the Federalist Papers, constitute a story of what would happen to America without the proposed founding. The Rising Nation scenario, which appears more intermittently and is related in detail in #11, is a narrative of the American future if the Constitution were ratified. In the former, America's “oldness” is exposed. The nation, both citizens and leaders, will replicate the animosities of past republics and finally lose their republican character altogether as they would become “Europeanized.” Moreover, “new” factors in America will actually accelerate this “old” process. On the other hand, should the Constitution be ratified, a “new” history is possible in which America not only retains its youth but is rejuvenated by constitutional arrangements.

The scenario of an America “wholly disunited, or united in partial confederacies” appears early in the Federalist Papers and constitutes the central prediction of the disaster scenario from which others follow. It is introduced in #2 by Jay who argues that the Constitution's opponents are contesting ratification because they are actually promoting “a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties.” Jay thus provides confirmation of Hamilton's warning that the founding moment will provide opportunities for the “perverted ambition” of a “class of men” who seek “fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several partial confederacies.” He assigns a newness to these alleged motives of the Constitution's opponents by contending that Americans prefer to “be one nation, under one federal government” and that it is designing politicians who have now offered this “new doctrine” and “these new political tenets” that call for “safety and happiness” in “a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties” (#2, 4, 8).

The disaster scenario uses interchangeably the predictions of thirteen future separate republics or several confederacies as two versions of a “disunited America.” In #5 Jay reminds his readers that England had missed its opportunity at union and suffered “for ages divided into three, and those three were almost constantly embroiled in quarrels and wars with one another.” He asks, “should the People of America divide themselves into three or four nations, would not the same thing happen?” and draws an image of “a period not very distant” in which several American confederacies would become “distinct nations” of unequal power (#5, 24). Of the “proposed Confederacies” the Northern one would be the strongest and he describes it as the “Northern Hive.” It is not “rash conjecture” to predict that “its young swarms might be tempted to gather honey in the more blooming fields and milder air of their luxurious and more delicate neighbors.” Jay adds to his narrative the vulnerability of a divided America to foreign aggression: “Leave America divided into thirteen, or if you please into three or four independent confederacies, what armies could they raise and pay, what fleets could they ever hope to have?” He asks if one confederacy/state would really “spend their blood and money” in defence of another or if “flattery” or “jealousy” would lead them to neutrality (#5, 26).

Hamilton pursues the prediction of separate republics (“independent unconnected sovereignties” formed “out of the wreck of the general confederacy”) in #6-8 and tells stories, based upon the experience of ancient republics and recent events in America of “frequent and violent contests” with one another and internally. The “celebrated” Pericles initiated four wars on the basis of resentment, pique and immediate political gain and was the “primitive author” of “that famous and fatal war” (the Peloponnesian War) which “terminated in the ruin of the Athenian commonwealth.” Carthage was the “aggressor in the very war that ended in her destruction.” The “haughty” republic of Venice engaged in constant war and was an “object of terror” to other city states. And then there are the American examples of “revolt,” “menacing disturbances,” and “insurrection”: Shay's rebellion and secessionist movements in North Carolina and Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania (#6, 34-35).

He denies that the “genius of republics” is “pacific,” even those commercial republics like America are no exception: #8 in particular draws a vivid picture of the American future. States would “with little difficulty overrun their less populous neighbors. Conquests would be easy to be made, as difficult to be retained. War therefore would be desultory and predatory. Plunder and devastation ever march in a train of irregulars. The calamities of individuals would make the principal figure in the events, which would characterize our military exploits” (#8, 45). Constant warfare would elevate the executive at the expense of legislative authority; armies would come to be regarded by the citizens not just as their protectors but as their superiors. Republics' constitutions would “acquire a progressive direction towards monarchy” and “we should see in a little time established in every part of this country, the same engines of despotism, which have been the scourge of the old world” (#8 46).

Readers of the Federalist Papers often note what we would call arguments from oldness in these disaster scenarios.⁶ Publius insists his predictions are based upon “the uniform course of human events” and the “accumulated experience of the ages” which tells us that republics are as “addicted to war” as monarchies, that the spirit of commerce only provides “new incentives” for aggression and that America would not be exempt from the same feelings of “horror and disgust” which arise when we read the histories of republics. Those who do not accept this narrative live in “the deceitful dream of a golden age” for they fail to recognize that America is “remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue” (#6, 36). But even in this context Publius adds “new” elements in his disaster scenarios that form a kind of negative American exceptionalism. Fortifications and large standing armies in Europe served to make war costly and defensive. Not so in America where their absence would encourage blitzkreig strategies. The American frontier would provide “an ample theatre for hostile pretensions, without any umpire or judge,” the number and vulnerability of American ports of entry would provide “easy” access to foreign fleets, and the public debt from the revolution would be an additional pretext for “external invasion and internal contention.”

It is, in fact, these exceptional sources of discord, added to those derived from knowledge gleaned from the “accumulated experience of the ages,” which would rapidly lead to the replication of European politics in America in several senses. America would replicate the convulsions of ancient republics like Athens and Carthage; America would then come to resemble Europe with its national divisions (Jay) and its political structures of despotism (Hamilton); America would become an extension of European rivalries “gradually entangled in all the pernicious labyrinths of European politics and wars.”

Publius, however, tells another story as well, one which will come about if the founding is successful. The two most common horrors in the disaster scenarios involve war and economic dislocation, events which are avoided in the Rising Nation stories.⁷ The refrain of the Rising Nation scenario is “if we mean to be a commercial people …” (#34, 211). Publius presents the prediction that America cannot become a Rising Nation without the new Constitution which opens up the “veins of commerce” and permits “a free circulation of commodities of every part” and once it becomes a highly successful commercial nation “it must form part of our policy, to be able one day to defend that commerce” which only the new constitutional arrangements can provide (#11, 71; #34, 211). Thus he carries forward his admonition in the disaster scenario that commercial republics are not exempt from aggressiveness but now contends that the American commercial republic “new modelled” as a “general system” can defend itself against internal discord and the designs of other nations which Publius argues “would not be difficult to trace by facts … to the cabinets of Ministers” at the present moment (#11, 66).

Economic activity under condition of disunion in the disaster scenario is “fettered,” “interrupted,” “stifled” and subject to “obstruction, or stagnation” while under a united system the “means of gratification … serves to vivify and invigorate the channels of industry” (#11, 66, 70-71, 73). Thus Publius connects the unity which provides the “energy” in government of which he so frequently speaks with the vigor of commercial activity. Newness as energy is thus the central trope of the Rising Nation scenario and Publius gives special weight to the exceptional nature of American enterprise when he speaks of the “unequalled spirit of enterprise, which signalizes the genius of American Merchants and Navigators,” the “adventurous spirit, which characterizes the commercial character of America” and the “active” American mechanic, the “industrious” American manufacturer, the “laborious” American husbandman.

Publius tells a story of the results of this youthful commercial energy as land values rise, the federal government has increasing revenues and export markets begin to emerge. European nations already are aware of the Rising Nation scenario. They see “what this country is becoming, with painful solicitude” and plan to foster divisions in America as a political project aimed at “clipping our wings, by which we might soar to a dangerous greatness” (#11, 66). Thus the Rising Nation must start the “great national object of a NAVY” from the “nursery of seamen it now is” to protect American commerce. “Different portions of confederated America” can contribute to this “essential establishment.” The South can provide wood, the middle Atlantic iron and the “Northern Hive” seamen.

In the disaster scenario America was absorbed in the “oldness” of Europe by imitating the conflicts of petty states and by becoming an extension of European conflicts. In the Rising Nation scenario America can “aim at the ascendant,” rejecting the European view that she is the “Mistress of the World” who is entitled to carve up and dominate the other three parts of the globe.⁸ Hamilton depicts America the Rising Nation as the force that can “vindicate the honor of the human race” and “teach the assuming brother moderation.” Publius, who prides himself on his reasoned arguments, lets restraint fall aside as he concludes: “Union will enable use to do it. Disunion will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen states, bound together in a strict and indissoluble union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all trans-atlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and new world!” (#11, 73).

CONSTITUTIONAL VISTAS

Publius is quite willing to embrace the newness of the founding moment and explore sharply drawn scenarios of the future with and without ratification. He is much more cautious in his discussion of the consequences of specific constitutional arrangements. About the newness of the federal plan in general he exults in regard to its source in the discovery of a new science of politics and its capacity to alter the natural history of republics. Montesquieu is confidently corrected and Madison tells readers that while Europeans were meritorious in discovering the principle of representation, “America can claim the merit of making the discovery the basis of unmixed and extensive republics” (#14, 84). He is proud of the “manly spirit” which has led to the “numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre” which, he predicts, posterity will be indebted. About the exact nature of federalism and its future trajectory, however, Publius resorts to strategies of evasive reassurance. The Convention aimed “only at a partial Union or consolidation,” exact boundaries are always difficult to determine, the Constitution was “in strictness” neither unitary nor federal but a combination of both, only implementation and practice can fully reveal “the meaning of all the parts.”

Publius' caution here is understandable since he is now confronted with the inverse of the situation when he was attacking the Confederation as a flawed founding and responded with his disaster stories and a narrative of a Rising Nation. In defending specific constitutional arrangements Publius must confront the disaster scenarios of the antifederalists. While his founding stories demonstrated the sorrowful histories of previous republics which he linked to his stories of an America disunited in thirteen or three or four parts, an article-by-article examination of the Constitution itself introduced the notion of newness as the untested/unknown, even the curious/exotic. Publius had appropriated newness as rare/exceptional (the Convention; even his own persona of a speaker of candor), as novel/innovative/experimental (the extended, compound republic), as youthful/energetic (the Rising Nation). Yet this definition of newness as untested/unknown remained his most significant challenge for he could not completely retreat from his various claims of newness nor could he ignore the fundamental newness as untestedness of the founding he so ardently supported.

Publius had offered warnings in his ratification script of the likely criticisms which would arise in this new moment and he returns frequently to these prophesies. Regarding suspicions that the Senate will become a “tyrannical aristocracy,” he replies in part that such a conclusion is the result of republican paranoia (#64, 437). Concerns about the power of the President come from critics who manipulate the people's aversion to monarchy. After defending against charges that members of the House will not be sufficiently attached to their electors, Publius questions the motives of his critics: “What then are we to understand by the objection which this paper has combated? What are we to say to the men who profess the most flaming zeal for Republican Government, yet boldly impeach the fundamental principle of it; who pretend to be champions for the right and capacity of the people to chuse their own rulers, yet maintain that they will prefer those only who will immediately and infallibly betray the trust committed to them?” (#57, 387)

While Publius scripts criticism as a predictable response to newness emanating from ambition and self-interest, he also emphasizes the continuity of the founding with past American practice and even republicanism in general. Here then is a form of storytelling that is itself new to Publius and he must be especially careful in pursuing this narrative for if the Constitution in its specific parts is a mere extension of the Confederation, the need for the founding is itself called into question. Madison faced this very dilemma in #40 when he confronted the exceptionally delicate question of the legality of the convention. While he insisted upon the absolute necessity of a new Constitution, he concluded that “the truth is, that the great principles of the Constitution proposed by the Convention, may be considered less as absolutely new, than as the expansion of principles which are found in the articles of Confederation.” No sooner than he makes the claim of continuity, he adds that the principles of the present system were “so feeble and confined” that “a degree of enlargement” was required which gives to the “new system, the aspect of an entire transformation of the old” (#40, 262-63).

The usual adeptness of Publius in manipulating old/new thus nearly disintegrates in this discussion but in regard to defending specific constitutional provisions he manages a more successful narrative in large part through the presentation of moving targets. He insists that every part of the Constitution is “strictly republican” and that no other government would be “defensible.” While acknowledgement is made that the Constitution consists of “political experiments,” its republican character is defended because the Constitution is consistent with the “fundamental principles of the revolution and the more general claim that it is based upon “the capacity of mankind for self-government.” These claims to continuity are partially assured because Madison has already captured the theoretical ground of newness, telling readers what is really novel and what is really not. He thus contends that the definition of a republic is itself a variable one and capable of revision and the criticism that some “bold and radical innovation” had been undertaken in regard to consolidation is unfounded because the Constitution is “neither wholly national, nor wholly federal.”

Publius' claim then that any experimentation that exists in constitutional arrangements is firmly within the republican tradition nicely reframes the old/new debate from one which read tested/untested to one which reads failure/success in terms of innovation. The Convention had only adopted provisions which already had been adopted by the “genius of the American people” and removed or reformed those which were acknowledged failures. Thus Madison in his defense of the separation of powers in the Constitution notes the “errors” into which the “founders of our republics” had admitted (and corrected) in their failure to recognize the likelihood of legislative usurpation and Hamilton contends that the practice of most of the states in regard to standing armies was the same as that provided for by the Constitution. The size of the House of Representatives was within the mean of ratios in existing state legislatures. The Presidency represented no retreat to monarchy but was an office quite like the Governor of New York and the Supreme Court was not a “novel and unprecedented” institution but a “copy of several state constitutions” (#69, 464-70; #81, 544).⁹

The story that Publius tells when he reviews the Constitution piece-by-piece is thus one of “oldness” as a continuation of the on-going experimentation on the part of the “founders of our republics” at the state level. The acknowledged experiment of the Constitution is hence not “new” as untested since it is largely a continuation of revisals of recognized errors. Publius had again undercut a nefarious definition of newness by his constant citation of existing state practices and their own recent innovations.

Critics of the Constitution, of course, did not fail to point out that the Constitution had engaged in a qualitatively new project by introducing new institutional structures at the national level and altering the confederal structure and offered their own disaster scenarios of the future should the Constitution be ratified. To this Publius responded with narratives of what can be called reverse disaster scenarios. His strategy is this: he repeats the disaster scenario of the Constitution's critics, indicates what circumstances must hold for the narrative to take place and then subjects it to ridicule alleging that upon examination it is “in reality a phantom” (judicial hegemony). “chimeral supposition” (control of the House by “some favorite class of men”), a collection of “extravagant surmises” (the federal authority to call elections as a source of usurpation), “visionary supposition” (the “downfall of State Governments”) (#81, 545; #60, 404; #59, 399; #46, 320).

Publius uses a wide variety of arguments to establish his reverse disaster scenarios. He is, of course, justly celebrated for his proposition that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition” as a remedy for constitutional corruption that avoids the need for frequent constitutional conventions. In #55, after rejecting numerous antifederalist disaster scenarios which would result from the alleged smallness of the House of Representatives, he concludes with an uncharacteristic reliance upon “qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence” (#55, 378). He also argues that some provisions are really a matter of indifference within a certain range. Thus in regard to the Convention's decision to provide for biennial rather than annual elections in the House, he replies: “No man will subject himself to the ridicule of pretending that any natural connection subsists between the sun or the seasons, and the period within which human virtue can bear the temptations of power” (#55, 360). He argues that it is “superfluous to try by the standards of theory” the principle of equal representation in the Senate since this was a provision which was the “result of compromise” (#62, 416).¹⁰

The most frequent response to the disaster scenarios, however, is a narrative which relies upon American exceptionalism. In the earlier numbers Publius is anxious to reject the argument that America was an exception to the history of republican discord. When he discusses constitutional provisions, however, he is willing to support exceptionalism, at least in particular circumstances. Confronted with skepticism that the House will form a separate class in society, Publius reviews all sorts of restraints—ranging from self-interest to frequent elections—but relies “above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America.” Critics had questioned the absence of a retirement age for judges. Publius responded that in America “fortunes are not affluent” and thus judges should not be cast out after long service to the republic (#63, 428; #57, 387; #79, 533).

The most vivid disaster scenario of the antifederalists centered upon the absence of a prohibition against standing armies and right of Congress to call out state militias. Standing armies were not only a theoretical specter for the antifederalist. The occupation by British forces was a fresh personal memory for many Americans who were even extremely reluctant to create a professional military force during the revolution.¹¹ Professional armies, especially in times of peace, represented monarchical power in its most brute form as well as a favorite occupation for young aristocrats. Thus the antifederalists presented the President as a military figure (the “president general” was Philadelphiensis' constant appellation and “captain-general” Montezuma's) with a huge army at his command staffed by “young gentlemen” who would act as the federal government's tax collectors and, with the authority of section 8 of Article One, drag young men on penalty of death from their “families and homes to any part of the continent for any length of time” (Kenyon 1985: 72, 64, 22).

In #8 Hamilton actually reversed the disaster scenario with his own by arguing that without ratification states would certainly be forced to raise large standing armies for their protection.¹² It is Madison, however, who takes on the antifederalist disaster scenario head-on in #46 when he tells a story which supposes a federal conspiracy to deprive the people of their liberties. Here the disaster scenario is thus reversed, first with a narrative which casts doubt upon its political, then its military plausibility. Madison clinches his argument by reversion by introducing American exceptionalism to his own narrative. An armed citizenry and elected local governments are practices unknown in Europe where governments are “afraid to trust the people.” Madison had ridiculed the disaster scenario as he retold it. Now, with the “newness” derived from “the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation” added to his own narrative, the implausibility of the disaster scenario fades as his own reverse takes over (#46, 320-21). For Madison now proudly recalls the triumphs of the American militias during the revolution and contends that it would be an “insult” to the “free and gallant citizens of America” to argue that they would be less able to defend their rights than the “debased subjects of arbitrary power” would be to rescue theirs. The specter of a rapacious standing army recedes almost completely as Madison's retelling focuses upon the bravery of the American citizen armed.

The eclecticism of Publius' reverse disaster scenarios is impressive. He brings forth arguments which include attacks on the republican credentials of the storytelling of his critics, he waves away some stories as much more plausibly told through narratives of theoretical and practical indifference or compromise, defends others as innovations tested by the post-revolutionary experiences of the states, offers his own counter-disaster narratives and appeals to the exceptionalism of the American experience as validation of the improbability of others. Taken together, however, the reverse disaster scenarios represent a single narrative in regard to the newness of constitutional provisions as the untested and unknown. For while all of these arguments concede newness, they do so only on terms Publius will grant. He will accept only narratives which are derived from his own “candor” and commitment to use “reason to condemn suspicion,” those which acknowledge that many provisions are harmless changes or inevitable compromises, those which are new but already tested in the American theatre, those which recognize the exceptional nature of the American people on certain questions.

PUBLIUS AS THE AUTHORITY ON THE NEW

We began this essay by contending that the authority of Publius rested with his excellence as a storyteller of the new, acknowledging that his status as storyteller is dependent upon the success of the founding itself. Certainly Publius deserves the attention he has received for his theoretical achievements in #10 and 51. But perhaps it might be worthwhile to consider that his authority, both during the ratification controversy and for subsequent generations, is connected to his capture of the new in the stories he told. For it is his account of the convention as an “astonishing” achievement compared to other efforts in history, as well as his narratives of the perennial failures of republics ancient and modern, his reluctance to support a founding moment and his own script for the ratification controversy that disposes us to question the motives of critics and which thus invites us to consider so carefully his arguments in #10 and elsewhere. Publius' vivid disaster scenarios and his futuristic accounts of a new Rising Nation provide both negative and positive grounds for receptivity to the founding which in turn receive reassurances when he speaks of the Constitution in its specifics.

But the excellence of Publius' storytelling extends even farther than its function as a kind of artillery for surrender to his theoretical innovations. For Publius' willingness to accommodate and appropriate the “new” makes him its authority. When he tells us that his positions reflect the “tried course of human affairs” and that he has consulted experience whenver it can be found, we listen. We listen, not because of the inherent reasonableness of Publius' arguments nor because we are overwhelmed by his philosophy or science, though reasonableness and philosphy and science do make their mark. We listen because he establishes himself as one who knows when newness is rashness and when prudent innovation, when it is exceptional and when tragic, when the new is vigorous, young and fresh and when raw, untested and unsophisticated. It is thus not Publius' conservatism that triumphs in his account of the founding and the Constitution in a direct way. For Publius can be reformist or radical, celebrating innovation and calling upon his readers to shut their hearts to doubts about novelty. Rather it is in Publius' status as authority on the new that makes him so exceptional a storyteller of the American founding and perhaps it is #14 of the Federalist Papers, not #10 and 51, which represents the acme of his achievement. For by acknowledging the “newness” of the American founding, as critic or supporter, we thus acknowledge as well Publius' authority and set off again a debate which he will always win. For if it is the “glory of the American people” to support a culture which prides itself on its capacity for innovation and newness, how could it fail not be drawn back to the most successful of its experiments?

Notes

1. Subsequent references to the Federalist Papers are by number and page from the Cooke edition.

2. Martin Diamond (1983: 86-87), Douglas Adair (1974: 107-23), Richard Hofstadter (1948), and John P. Roche (1961) emphasized the practicality and experiential reasoning of Publius although Diamond detected a prescience which Roche questioned while Adair acknowledged his novelty in appropriating Hume's concept of the commercial republic. Robert Dahl's influential A Preface to Democratic Theory (1956) granted to Publius the novelty of producing a text that was primarily composed of scientific theorems. The debate over Publius' republican/liberal anchors has had many participants including Joyce Appleby (1986), Thomas Prangle (1988), Issac Kraminick (1982), Gordon Wood (1969), Sheldon Wolin (1989). Treatments which emphasize the eclecticism of Publius in regard to old/new include: Michael Lienesch (1988) and James Farr (1988).

3. I leave aside the question of whether narratives constitute a preferable form for expressing political judgment. This argument is offered in quite different frameworks by Richard Rorty (1989), Alasdair MacIntyre (1985), and Charles Taylor (1989). For explorations of inherent antagonisms between story telling and theory formation, see: Philip Abbott (1991).

4. There is a strong argument for newness here and one with not a little irony since, including the Constitution itself which was ratified by state convention, only five of the twenty-eight constitutions adopted between 1776 and 1800 were popularly approved. See: Donald S. Lutz (1980: 83); Joshua Miller (1991: 60-64).

5. Although Albert Furtwangler (1984: 94) challenges the centrality of the Federalist Papers as a decisive force in the ratification campaign, he argues that the essays are notable for a tone of “high, privileged civility” that was extracted and perfected from eighteenth century political discourse.

6. See, for example: Vincent Ostrom (1987: 48-56); Michael Lienesch (1988: 121-26). Ostrom identifies them as the “logic of mutually destructive relationships” and Lienesch as a “cautionary form of history.”

7. There is certainly a tension evident in the depictions of the actual features of America as a Rising Nation which has led some readers to suggest the existence of two stories told by Publius' much discussed “split personality” in regard to federalism. Yet Publius does manage to submerge conflictual storytelling in the Federalist Papers. Hamilton and Madison recognize the antagonism between manufacturing and landowning interests without taking sides in #10, 35. Alan Gibson argues more broadly that Madison did not advance an argument for a commercial republic in the Federalist Papers (1993: 497-528). As a popular ideological motif, the “rising nation” trope emerges in the pre-revolutionary period with Freneau's “A Poem, on the Rising Glory of America.” It is this more general nationalist expression (America's mission will not be fulfilled “Till foreign crowns have vanish'd from our view”) that Publius relies upon.

8. Hamilton's appeal to post-colonial resentment is thus transformed by the modern reader who cannot fail to connect the Rising Nation scenario to America's later hegemonic international position.

9. In #70 a #72, Publius, in one of his few departures from caution in regard to specific constitutional arrangements, challenges republican convention in regard to the plural executive and rotation in office.

10. Sometimes Publius even offers counter-disaster scenarios of his own with state governments as conspirators. See: #43, 292; #59, 402.

11. See the following for examinations of the centrality of the standing army controversy in colonial American culture: John Phillip Reid (1981); John Royster (1979); John Todd White (1978).

12. In #24 Hamilton dismissed the concern about standing armies by contending that the power to raise armies rested with Congress, not the President, and that states, when they addressed the subject in their constitutions, only cautioned against their formation rather than forbade it (#24, 153-56).

References

Abbott, Philip. 1991. “Political Theory and Story Telling.” Soundings 12: 369-97.

Adair, Douglas. 1974 “Experience Must Be Our Only Guide.” In Trevor Colborn, ed., Fame and the Founding Fathers. New York: Norton.

Appleby, Joyce. 1986. “Republicanism in Old and New Contexts.” William and Mary Quarterly 43: 20-34.

Beard, Charles. 1913. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. New York: Macmillan.

Cooke, Jacob E., ed. 1961. The Federalist. Middletown, CT: Weslyan University Press.

Dahl, Robert. A. 1956. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Diamond, Martin. 1983. “The Federalist.” In Morton J. Frisch and Richard G. Stevens, eds., American Political Thought. Itsaca, IL: Peacock.

Farr, James. 1988. “Conceptual Change and Constitutional Innovation.” In Terence Ball and J. G. A. Pocock, eds., Conceptual Change and the Constitution. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.

Ferguson, Robert A. 1986. “‘We Hold These Truths’: Strategies of Control in the Literature of the Founders.” In Sacvan Bercovitch, ed., Reconstructing American Literary History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Furtwangler, Albert. 1984. The Authority of Publius. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Gibson, Alan. 1993. “The Commercial Republic and the Pluralist Critique of Marxism: An Analysis of Martin Diamond's Interpretation of Federalist #10.” Polity 25: 497-528.

Hofstadter, Richard. 1948. The American Political Tradition. New York: Vintage.

Kenyon, Cecelia., ed. 1985. The Antifederalists. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Kraminick, Issac. 1982. “Republican Revisionism Revisited.” American Historical Review 87: 629-64.

Lienesch, Michael. 1988. New Order of the Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lutz, Donald S. 1980. Popular Consent and Popular Control. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

Miller, Joshua. 1991. The Rise and Fall of Democracy in America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

MacIntyre, Alaisdair. 1985. After Virtue. London: Duckworth.

Ostrom, Vincent. 1987. The Political Theory of the Compound Republic. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Prangle, Thomas A. 1985. “The FEDERALIST PAPERS' Vision of Civic Health and the Tradition Out of Which That Vision Emerges.” Western Political Quarterly 39: 577-601.

———. 1988. The Spirit of Modern Republicanism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Reid, John Philip. 1981. In Defiance of Law: The Standing Army Controversy, the Two Constitutions, and the Coming of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Roche, John P. 1961. “The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action.” American Political Science Review 55: 799-816.

Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Royster, John. 1979. A Revolutionary People at War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

White, John Todd. 1978. “Standing Armies in Time of War: Republican Theory and Military Practice During the American Revolution.” Ph.D. dissertation: George Washington University.

Wolin, Sheldon. 1989. The Presence of the Past. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Wood, Gordon. 1969. The Creation of the American Republic. New York: Norton.