"Hamilton anticipates the war?" Topic

I have long argued that while the immediate cause of the war was the status of slavery in the western territories, an equally important underlying cause was the ambiguity of where power was divided between the central government and the states. My current project is a teacher's guide to the FEDERALIST, and here Hamilton seems to assume that ambiguity. The format of my TG is to split the original text into paragraphs, bolding key phrases, and interspersing my own summaries (as Hamilton's prose is a difficult read).

TMP does not pick up my bolding. But if you are interested, my numbered summaries are designed to make the argument more accessible to student readers.

Federalist No. 17
The Same Subject Continued: The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union
For the Independent Journal
Tuesday, December 4, 1787.
Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York:

1. Is it reasonable, Hamilton asks, to fear that a national government that legislates directly upon individuals may become too powerful and absorb the state governments? No, he answers, because what ambitious man wants to be in control of "the mere domestic police of a state?" (Teachers may ask what ambitious politician today wants to be in charge of filling potholes?) (Hamilton does not anticipate the totalitarian impulse –which began in France in the following decade and grew monstrously in the 20th century in Germany and Italy and Russia – which does want to control every aspect of life.)

AN OBJECTION, of a nature different from that which has been stated and answered, in my last address, may perhaps be likewise urged against the principle of legislation for the individual citizens of America. It may be said that it would tend to render the government of the Union too powerful, and to enable it to absorb those residuary authorities, which it might be judged proper to leave with the States for local purposes. Allowing the utmost latitude to the love of power which any reasonable man can require, I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons intrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition. Commerce, finance, negotiation, and war seem to comprehend all the objects which have charms for minds governed by that passion; and all the powers necessary to those objects ought, in the first instance, to be lodged in the national depository. The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction. It is therefore improbable that there should exist a disposition in the federal councils to usurp the powers with which they are connected; because the attempt to exercise those powers would be as troublesome as it would be nugatory; and the possession of them, for that reason, would contribute nothing to the dignity, to the importance, or to the splendor of the national government.

2. Hamilton argues that the states, being closer to the people, are more likely to encroach upon the national government's power than the reverse.

But let it be admitted, for argument's sake, that mere wantonness and lust of domination would be sufficient to beget that disposition; still it may be safely affirmed, that the sense of the constituent body of the national representatives, or, in other words, the people of the several States, would control the indulgence of so extravagant an appetite. It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national authorities than for the national government to encroach upon the State authorities. The proof of this proposition turns upon the greater degree of influence which the State governments if they administer their affairs with uprightness and prudence, will generally possess over the people; a circumstance which at the same time teaches us that there is an inherent and intrinsic weakness in all federal constitutions; and that too much pains cannot be taken in their organization, to give them all the force which is compatible with the principles of liberty.

3. It is natural to have more affection for what is closest to us; that includes governments. (This is a good opportunity for teachers to discuss FDR's radio "fireside chats" which brought the national government into every living room during the Depression, and so, for the first time, made the national government seem "closer" than state or local authorities.)

The superiority of influence in favor of the particular governments would result partly from the diffusive construction of the national government, but chiefly from the nature of the objects to which the attention of the State administrations would be directed.
It is a known fact in human nature, that its affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object. Upon the same principle that a man is more attached to his family than to his neighborhood, to his neighborhood than to the community at large, the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union; unless the force of that principle should be destroyed by a much better administration of the latter.

4. State and local governments deal directly with criminal and civil justice, and so are visibly essential to protection of life and property.

This strong propensity of the human heart would find powerful auxiliaries in the objects of State regulation.
The variety of more minute interests, which will necessarily fall under the superintendence of the local administrations, and which will form so many rivulets of influence, running through every part of the society, cannot be particularized, without involving a detail too tedious and uninteresting to compensate for the instruction it might afford.
There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments, which alone suffices to place the matter in a clear and satisfactory light,--I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice. This, of all others, is the most powerful, most universal, and most attractive source of popular obedience and attachment. It is that which, being the immediate and visible guardian of life and property, having its benefits and its terrors in constant activity before the public eye, regulating all those personal interests and familiar concerns to which the sensibility of individuals is more immediately awake, contributes, more than any other circumstance, to impressing upon the minds of the people, affection, esteem, and reverence towards the government. This great cement of society, which will diffuse itself almost wholly through the channels of the particular governments, independent of all other causes of influence, would insure them so decided an empire over their respective citizens as to render them at all times a complete counterpoise, and, not unfrequently, dangerous rivals to the power of the Union.

5. Most of what the national government does is unobserved, and people feel less attached to it. (The exception would be in wartime.)

The operations of the national government, on the other hand, falling less immediately under the observation of the mass of the citizens, the benefits derived from it will chiefly be perceived and attended to by speculative men. Relating to more general interests, they will be less apt to come home to the feelings of the people; and, in proportion, less likely to inspire an habitual sense of obligation, and an active sentiment of attachment.

6. Feudalism demonstrates how powerful local interests can cripple the central authority.

The reasoning on this head has been abundantly exemplified by the experience of all federal constitutions with which we are acquainted, and of all others which have borne the least analogy to them.
Though the ancient feudal systems were not, strictly speaking, confederacies, yet they partook of the nature of that species of association. There was a common head, chieftain, or sovereign, whose authority extended over the whole nation; and a number of subordinate vassals, or feudatories, who had large portions of land allotted to them, and numerous trains of INFERIOR vassals or retainers, who occupied and cultivated that land upon the tenure of fealty or obedience, to the persons of whom they held it. Each principal vassal was a kind of sovereign, within his particular demesnes. The consequences of this situation were a continual opposition to authority of the sovereign, and frequent wars between the great barons or chief feudatories themselves. The power of the head of the nation was commonly too weak, either to preserve the public peace, or to protect the people against the oppressions of their immediate lords. This period of European affairs is emphatically styled by historians, the times of feudal anarchy.

7. The only time a prince could prevail over his barons was when he championed the common people against oppression by their barons. (Machiavelli makes precisely this point in advising a prince to ally with the people. You can always create new barons.)

When the sovereign happened to be a man of vigorous and warlike temper and of superior abilities, he would acquire a personal weight and influence, which answered, for the time, the purpose of a more regular authority. But in general, the power of the barons triumphed over that of the prince; and in many instances his dominion was entirely thrown off, and the great fiefs were erected into independent principalities or States. In those instances in which the monarch finally prevailed over his vassals, his success was chiefly owing to the tyranny of those vassals over their dependents. The barons, or nobles, equally the enemies of the sovereign and the oppressors of the common people, were dreaded and detested by both; till mutual danger and mutual interest effected a union between them fatal to the power of the aristocracy. Had the nobles, by a conduct of clemency and justice, preserved the fidelity and devotion of their retainers and followers, the contests between them and the prince must almost always have ended in their favor, and in the abridgment or subversion of the royal authority.

8. Scotland is an example.

This is not an assertion founded merely in speculation or conjecture. Among other illustrations of its truth which might be cited, Scotland will furnish a cogent example. The spirit of clanship which was, at an early day, introduced into that kingdom, uniting the nobles and their dependants by ties equivalent to those of kindred, rendered the aristocracy a constant overmatch for the power of the monarch, till the incorporation with England subdued its fierce and ungovernable spirit, and reduced it within those rules of subordination which a more rational and more energetic system of civil polity had previously established in the latter kingdom.

9. Again, Hamilton argues that the states, provided they retain the affection of their people, can oppose encroachments by the national government. Hopefully they will not do so unnecessarily. (Hamilton here seems to assume a constant tension between state and national authority, and a certain ambiguity in where the line is drawn between the two. And the events of the next seventy years, leading to secession and civil war, bear that out.)

The separate governments in a confederacy may aptly be compared with the feudal baronies; with this advantage in their favor, that from the reasons already explained, they will generally possess the confidence and good-will of the people, and with so important a support, will be able effectually to oppose all encroachments of the national government. It will be well if they are not able to counteract its legitimate and necessary authority. The points of similitude consist in the rivalship of power, applicable to both, and in the CONCENTRATION of large portions of the strength of the community into particular DEPOSITS, in one case at the disposal of individuals, in the other case at the disposal of political bodies.

10. In short, Hamilton thinks people who worry that the central government will dominate the states have it backwards.

A concise review of the events that have attended confederate governments will further illustrate this important doctrine; an inattention to which has been the great source of our political mistakes, and has given our jealousy a direction to the wrong side. This review shall form the subject of some ensuing papers.

PUBLIUS.

I'd go as far as "Hamilton anticipates the conflict of loyalties which made the war possible." Mind you, he's writing this three years after the Third Yankee-Pennamite War, and with the Great Vermont Land Grab in process--not to mention having just sided with a local government against central authority himself. It wasn't a great leap of imagination.

Worth considering how many Americans, down to the Civil War, lived their lives without ever seeing another state, much less obeying its laws and paying its taxes, and how much of the movement west was neighbors moving west together until some western county was declared a territory and then a state. You can watch Boones and Lincolns moving west down the Ohio, intermarrying, and buying and selling land from one another and holding local positions for about three generations before Honest Abe goes into national politics.

Yes, that is a good way of phrasing it. Of course this is only one of several papers in which Ham discusses all of that. Americans were very good both at overthrowing governments and at starting new ones.

an equally important underlying cause was the ambiguity of where power was divided between the central government and the states.

I would say that this was the cause of the ACW. In order to get the 1787 Constitution ratified the relationship between the federal and state governments was, by design, left underdetermined. In a sense the Convention delegates kicked the can down the road and left it for later generations to figure this out. I don't fault the delegates for this decision. They wanted a strong federal government but the anti-federalist sentiment in the states was strong enough to thwart an explicit description of national authority vis-à-vis the states. I would say the 1787 Constitution was a fudge and the ACW was an inevitable and logical outcome of this fudge. Slavery was merely a pretext for a deeper argument that had been going in the USA for several generations about national versus state authority. When one reads the anti-Federalist literature in the late 1780s you can see the writing on the wall.

Marcus, I agree that at some point we were going to have to decide whether "the United States are" or "the United States is" but I think if we could have somehow dodged the bullet on slavery this might have been more on the order of the Whiskey Rebellion or the Nullification Crisis than four years of wholesale slaughter. And time--in the form of canals, railroads, telegraphs and later radios and televisions--was on the side of the central government.

In the absence of one of H. Beam Piper's paratime machines, we can all sit around and argue when the combination of local vs federal loyalties and the instituion of slavery made the ACW inevitable without any danger of having our claims disproven. For my part, I'd have said later than 1787, though probably earlier than 1837.

I think slavery, or really slavery in the territories, was the immediate cause. but the vagueness or looseness of the federal union was a necessary pre-condition. So both, in combination. And we did nearly have a war in the 1830s over the tariff. And the British empire did abolish slavery without a war.

The 1787 Constitution missed a number of things as time passed.

The effects of a Two Party System. The power that it gave to Governors, States Legislatures and State Judiciaries, to oppose, or support, the Federal Government. Depending on Party alinement at any given time.

Add to the mix no one realising the Electoral Collage would be come a joke that reduced Politics to what mattered to Seven States.

The matter is that they could never have seen the implications that would run 100 years, 200 years and pushing 300 years down the line.

Plus the divergence that has solidified over the last three decades or more where no one sees it their political interest to do anything about it.

I think the framers of the 1787 Constitution didn't miss anything. They fully realized that they were kicking the can down the road. They all would be flabbergasted to realize that it lasted almost 250 years. 238 to be exact. There are those who worry that it won't fully last 250 years, and some who wish it would not.
They wanted to get a working constitution in place NOW. And then, it immediately required 10 Amendments.
And we have courts whose interpretation is totally politically biased. And we have those prepared to ignore these interpretations.

So, is this serious, but not hopeless? Or is it hopeless but not serious.