American Founding

Among the politically active classes of late-eighteenth century America were well-educated men intimately familiar with the most important ancient pagan and modern European political theorists and leading thinkers in philosophy, British and international law, history, and theology (see, for example, the remarkably expansive [Page 18]list of texts included in James Madison's original plan for the Library of Congress). Yet, it would be wrong to assume that any of these authors largely shaped the political thinking of those Americans most active in molding the new state and national political institutions.

Instructive in this matter is John Dickinson, a controversial but highly regarded author and mid-Atlantic political figure of the time. Near the end of the 1787 Convention in Philadelphia where the U.S. Constitution was, with difficulty, put together, Dickinson explained the intellectual process that had guided Americans in their move toward independence and the creation of a new state. According to notes made by Madison, Dickinson urged that “experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us. It was not Reason that discovered the singular & admirable mechanism of the English Constitution. … Accidents probably produced these discoveries, and experience has given a sanction to them. This is then our guide” (Farrand, Vol. II, p. 278). In light of such helpful guidance, a brief exploration of the political theory of the American founding can be best served by a short overview of the history of the two periods of the American founding and an exploration, not of European theorists of prominence, but of the actual historical terms of debate that shaped Americans' inherited political perspectives. Among the most useful terms to keep in focus are now antiquated ones like “court” and “country” politics, various but essential understandings of balanced government, and old-fashioned oppositions like authority and liberty.