TY - JOUR
AU - McDowell, Gary, L.
AB - On April 16, 1787, on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, James Madison wrote to George Washington sharing his thoughts on what the Virginia delegates to Philadelphia were likely to confront, not least regarding what would be the fate of confederalism and the Virginians' hope for a new and energetic government. “Conceiving that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with their aggregate sovereignty; and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it is unattainable, I have,” Madison confessed, “sought for some middle ground which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever the can be subordinately useful.” It is not too much to say that the search for the meaning of that “middle ground” became the essence of the American founding. The newly proposed constitution was soon beset by Antifederalist critics bent on keeping it as confederal as they could, and by its Federalist friends just as committed to making it as national as they could. Madison's later assurances in The Federalist that the effort to revive the sagging Articles of Confederation (which he had described as a “lifeless mass”) into a constitution that would create a true government capable of meeting the exigencies of the Union was nothing more than a “judicious modification of the federal principle” by and large fell on deaf Antifederalist ears. In their view the modification had been anything but judicious. Nor was his promise that the proposed constitution was in “strictness neither a national or a federal constitution but a composition of both” enough to assuage their fears of a large and consolidated government. It is into this ongoing series of intellectual skirmishes that Shlomo Slonim turns his formidable scholarly attentions. By a careful reading of original sources beginning with the Articles of Confederation, moving onto the intellectually sophisticated arguments of the Constitutional Convention and through the ratification debates, including the creation and the ratification of the Bill of Rights, throughout, this extended excursion is sharpened by the focus of the book. The central concern here is the evolution of the political thought of Madison, as the subtitle of the book suggests. What fascinates here is how the archnationalist Madison saw his world view transformed into that of an ardent defender of Jeffersonian democracy, leaving Slonim to wonder if in fact Madison had accepted the Antifederalist way of looking at the constitutional republic. In this sense it is possible to see the terms of nationalism to be not Madison's but those of his fellow Virginian, Chief Justice John Marshall. © The Author 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Forging the American Nation, 1787–1791: James Madison and the Federalist Revolution
JO - The Journal of American History
DO - 10.1093/jahist/jaz545
DA - 2019-12-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/forging-the-american-nation-1787-1791-james-madison-and-the-federalist-gPhRzjVDvg
SP - 742
VL - 106
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -