CHAPTER 4

The U.S. Experiments with Confederation and Federation


Example is of the first importance in politics, because political
calculations are so complex that we cannot trust theory, if we cannot
support it by experience. Now the experience of the Americans is
necessarily an impressive lesson to England. -- Lord Acton, The Civil
War in America, January 18, 1866.

Certainly the experience of the United States has been one of the most
exciting and thrilling in the history of the world. -- Governor Nelson
A. Rockefeller April 22, 1960.

On May 17, 1957, Secretary Dulles told P.F. Brundage, then Director of
the Budget Bureau, and me: "I have long been in favor of the federal
principle" for the North Atlantic democracies, and added that the United
States experience with the Articles of Confederation proved that the
effort of the United States and other NATO nations to make the alliance
system work was an attempt "to do the undo-able." But while Secretary of
State he always found some reason for putting off a little longer the
calling of the convention to work out a "do-able" system ... some reason
that looked important then but already has lost significance. Before
Secretary Dulles got round to doing what he meant for years to do, his
time on earth ran out. -- The author in the December, 1959, Freedom &
Union.

Reasoning from analogy is, of course, beset with pitfalls. Many,
therefore, dismiss the thought that American history can give us
guidance on which remedy to try for freedom's ills today: Federal union
-- or confederation, community, alliance. They forget that there is no
other way to profit from experience, and that alternative lines of
reasoning, which they themselves follow, have worse traps in them, and
are often pure speculation or theory. They forget, too, that in the
complex political field, example is, as Lord Acton point ed out, of
prime importance.

Others, who are not so foolish as to brush aside reasoning from analogy,
argue -- as we have noted -- that no sound resemblance can be drawn
between the Thirteen States in 1787 and the North Atlantic peoples
today. Granted, the differences between the two are indeed great and
obvious, but they are not so great, or so obvious, as those between
guinea pigs and men. Perhaps the least obvious and most significant
difference between the latter two is this: The guinea pig can see no
analogy between himself and man, whereas man can see enough such
resemblances to save many human lives by drawing conclusions by analogy
from experiments made on guinea pigs.

The experience of the Americans which Lord Acton held to be "necessarily
an impressive lesson to England," certainly should be even more
impressive to Americans. Had we but studied our own history with half
Lord Acton's insight, followed its teachings and tried its remedy before
trusting the lives of our children to pure theory, and to Old World
methods that have always led to disaster, how far ahead we would be
today!

Before we Americans expose our families further as guinea pigs in the
trial and error laboratory of witch-doctor statesmanship, let us study
more closely what we can learn from the experiments our forefathers
made, first with confederation and then with federal union. There is no
better way to understand the difference between confederation and
federation, and how vital it is.

Our forefathers began as we have seen, by making the mistake our own
generation has made. They, too, assumed that the only way to secure
their own individual freedom was to make sure that their states would be
free not only from foreign autocracy but from their fellow democracies.
To this end their Articles of Confederation guaranteed the sovereignty
of each of the Thirteen States, but included nothing else to assure the
sovereignty of their citizens. By the same line of thought our
generation set up for the same purpose first, the League of Nations,
and, when it failed, next the United Nations and, when it proved
insufficient, the North Atlantic alliance. And now that NATO also has
proved inadequate, it is proposed that we seek to assure our freedom as
citizens by trying next still another type of organization based on the
sovereign state -- confederation.

We have already noted how much stronger than NATO the Confederation of
the Thirteen was, not only in structure but in linguistic, historical
and other community ties. Yet these confederated states, even when they
had their common war for independence to help keep them united, suffered
such chronic disunion as to make General Washington almost despair.
Confederation was so feeble that, as Madison pointed out in the Federal
Convention, even tiny "Delaware during the late war opposed and defeated
an embargo to which twelve states had agreed, and continued to supply
the enemy with provisions in time of war."

HIS EXCELLENCY, GEORGE C, AND HIS MAJESTY, GEORGE III

Once the war was won, disunion degenerated into chaos. Although the
Confederacy had the power to issue and borrow money, the failure of its
member states to back it up soon made its "Continental" currency an
enduring byword for worthlessness -- "not worth a Continental" -- and
ruined its credit at home and abroad; it could not borrow even at
usurious interest rates. Each of the Thirteen States had retained the
right to issue its own currency; their money, with few exceptions, fared
worse or little better. These currencies together with the tariffs by
which the Thirteen sought to protect themselves from each other, proved
too much for even the relatively simple business and agriculture of
those days. Soon galloping inflation and depression (not so deep as we
experienced in 1929-33) ravaged the states of the Confederation. This
led some of them to centralize power in their state government (though
far less dangerously than in the Nazi dictatorship which depression
brought to the German democracy -- or than the centralization that
another depression would now cause in Washington, London, Paris and the
other allied sovereign capitals of Atlantica.)

By turning to Chapter I of Union Now one can get perhaps enough other
details to see the situation in the Thirteen States in those days when
the chief executive of a sovereign state styled himself "His Excellency
George Clinton, Esquire, Governor of the State of New York, General and
Commander-in-Chief of all the Militia and Admiral of the Navy of the
same." Incidentally, His Excellency was one of those who bitterly
opposed "sacrificing" state sovereignty to transform the Confederation
into a federal union.

In our misguided day, the majority seem to regard the Declaration of
Independence as His Excellency did, as if the memorable thing it
accomplished was to separate us from Britain and as if the independence
it declared was for the state rather than the citizen. But to other
leaders of that day, whom we remember better than we do His Excellency,
the separation from Britain and the establishment of Thirteen "Free and
Independent States" were not ends in themselves, but merely means to
establish the principles of free government and of equal individual
liberty for "all men" which the Declaration began by declaring.

The Confederation's failure to serve these ends reminded these leaders
that the Declaration had also asserted that "whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these aims it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness. The language was clear, but many of their fellow American
could not believe that the unlimited sovereignty of their own state
could become as destructive to life and liberty as George III's had
been. They were as confused as was His Excellency, George C. There was
then no threat of attack by any powerful autocrat to unite them; instead
there was a depression to keep them divided. Even so, they sent their
delegates in 1787 to Philadelphia and there -- in the same room in
Independence Hall where they had signed their revolutionary Declaration
-- their Convention devised the federal union way ... of "life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness" ... for citizens, not states.

CREATING FEDERAL "GOVERNMENT
OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE"

We can see now more clearly than was possible then the essential thing
they did in changing from confederation to federal union. They simply
made their inter-state government a representative democracy like each
democracy in it. They changed from a government of, by and for states to
a "government of the people, by the people, for the people" -- thus
establishing the basic difference between all federal unions and all
confederations, leagues, alliances. We have become so used to Lincoln's
famous phrase that we now glide over its deep meaning. That meaning had
to be written in his time in blood before enough men could see it. We
cannot ponder Lincoln's words too thoughtfully now.

Government of the people: All government must govern something, operate
on something, maintain itself and enforce its laws against some sort of
lawbreaker. Inter-state government has only two choices: It must either
be a government of states as units, or a government of the people
individually as units. Whereas the Confederation sought to govern
sovereign armed states, the new Federal Union was organized to govern
only the citizen in each state.

The framers of the Federal Constitution had learned from personal
experience that a government could not effectively operate on states
that a government of governments was, as Hamilton said, a "political
monster." In their state governments they had not followed the absurd
principle of trying to coerce and govern towns and counties as units;
they governed instead the citizens in them individually. Thanks largely
to George Mason, they decided to follow the same common-sense way in
their interstate government. It seems simple enough, but, as Tocqueville
pointed out, this had never been done before in all the world's various
attempts to organize inter-state government. He ranked it "as a great
discovery in modern political science."

Government by the people: Some unit must govern in any government -- and
inter-state government must be a government either by the states or by
the people in them individually. We have noted that the state
governments governed the Confederation through their appointees, with
each state accorded equal weight regardless of the number of people in
it. The new Federal Union was organized to be governed on the principle
of majority rule by the citizens in each state, weighed roughly as
equals.

Here again the framers of the Constitution did the common-sense thing.
They had tried to run none of their state governments by the grotesque
confederation system, with one vote for each county, and unanimity
necessary for serious action. They merely transferred to their
inter-state government the system they used in their state governments,
after adding safeguards against the small states being dominated by the
larger ones, and against centralization.

It was this change that has allowed the Federal Union government to
escape the remoteness from the people that has been the curse of all
confederations, leagues and alliances, and to respond to public opinion
as quickly and effectively as any democratic government must. This
innovation, too, seems simple enough. Yet nothing in the Constitution
threatened more to disrupt the Federal Convention than this shift in the
basis of power from equal states to equal citizens. And nothing in
American history was more completely forgotten by the drafters of the
Geneva Covenant, the United Nations Charter and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization.

Government for the people: Government is always made for some primary
purpose, and inter-state government must either be made for the states
in it or for the people, the citizens. The Articles of Confederation
began, "We, the undersigned delegates of the states affixed to our
names," and set out to safeguard each state's "sovereignty, freedom and
independence." The framers of the Constitution made Federal Union -- as
George Mason put it -- "a government for men and not for societies of
men or States." They made this clear in the very first words of the
Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect
Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.

Here, once more, they did the common-sense thing. They made their
inter-state government clearly for themselves, like their state
governments. None of these was organized for the preposterous purpose of
keeping the town or county governments absolutely independent. Yet here,
too, the framers of the Constitution were doing something new in
inter-state government, correcting a fatal error and making another
fertile contribution to political science.

UNITING THE PEOPLE AND DIVIDING THEIR GOVERNMENTS,
THE BETTER TO RULE THEM

They made Federal Union a government for the people not only in their
clear-cut words, but in a most substantial way. Their American
forefathers had learned this way to greater freedom one hundred and
fifty years before -- in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut of 1639.

They had proved by experience that men can secure more freedom by (a)
uniting instead of dividing themselves and (b) dividing instead of
uniting their governors. They had learned to divide the powers of
government according to whether the majority of citizens would gain more
by having them local or by making them general, and to keep all who
exercised these powers equally dependent on the people. Just as they
employed one set of men to run their house for them another set to run
their farm, and another to run their looms, they employed one set of men
to govern their town, another set to govern their country, and a third
to govern their state. They kept each set as directly dependent on them
as are spokes on the hub of a wheel.

But, until 1787, they had not only stopped this system at the state
line, but reversed it there as we still do. They had let the men elected
to govern their relations inside the state govern their relations with
other states, too.

In setting up our present Constitution they arranged to govern those
relations also by men they chose themselves for this particular job.
They returned again to the way of common sense. They centered this
fourth spoke, too, on themselves as the hub, instead of on the rim of
their wheel, as in the Confederation.

Then they divided the powers of government between the new Union
government and the Thirteen State governments according to which would
serve the people better. Wherever they agreed that they would all gain
freedom by transferring a power from each state government to the Union
government they transferred it -- and forbade their state
representatives to meddle henceforth in their inter-state affairs.
Wherever they agreed that the people would be freer if the powers of
government were left where they were, they kept them there, and forbade
their Union representatives to meddle in such affairs. They required the
Union to guarantee that all rights not specifically given it would
remain in the hands of the state governments, respectively, or in the
hands of the people.[1]

The makers of the Constitution ended by shifting only five major powers
from the state governments to the Union government. But by this shift
they gained for the people these five tremendous advantages:

First, they abolished those Thirteen independent armies that were
threatening to embroil them in war, and they secured a far more
effective power for peace and for defense.

Second, they abolished those Thirteen fluttering currencies and gained a
common, stable means of doing business.

Third, they removed Thirteen tariff walls at one blow, and gained the
rich free-trade market the world envies.

Fourth, they brushed aside Thirteen barriers to communi- cations. They
already enjoyed under the Confederation the freedom that a common postal
service brings; they gained a cheaper, freer inter-state river and
coastal service -- while clearing the way for steamship, railway,
telegraph, telephone, automobile, airplane, wireless, and television.

Fifth, they avoided the many restrictions and dangers of being divided
into Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, Rhode Islanders, and so on, and
secured the vast freedom of American citizenship, without losing their
state citizenship.

They gained all these advantages for all the 3,000,000 freemen of the
Thirteen States equally -- and far more for us, their posterity,
180,000,000 strong, who now enjoy Federal Union in fifty states. I call
this making "government for the people" in a great way, both in
principle and in practice. This was another of the innovations that
distinguish federal union from confederations, leagues, alliances and
all other systems of inter-state organization. It helped make the
Constitution, as one of its critics, Luther Martin, told the Federal
Convention, "a perfect medley of confederated and national government,
without example and without precedent."

THE "ASTONISHING, UNEXAMPLED SUCCESS" THAT FOLLOWED

Such was the revolutionary experiment our forefathers made when they
replaced confederation with the world's first federal union. We shall
see in Chapter 7 the confusion in which this change -- which seems so
simple now-was made. But first, consider the result.

The result, as Lord Acton has said, was an "astonishing and unexampled
success." The inventors of federal union had thus "solved," he said,
"two problems which had hitherto baffled the capacity of the most
enlightened nations: they had contrived a system of federal government
which prodigiously increased the national power and yet respected local
liberties and authorities; and they had founded it on the principle of
equality, without surrendering the securities for property and
freedom."[2]

Can you name three of those eleven territorial disputes that were
dividing the Thirteen States in 1787? Speaking on the lecture platform,
I have put that question to many thousands of Americans all over the
Union. I have never found a single one who could name even three. That
shows how thoroughly federal union makes for peace. It settled these
disputes so well they are forgotten.

Of course, there was one Civil War. We shall consider it in Chapter 8.
Meanwhile we need but to note that all governments (centralized
republics, monarchies, aristocracies, what not) have also suffered civil
war, while leagues, alliances and confederations have had no end of wars
between members. I recall no federal union that has ever been threatened
with war between two member states.

So much for peace. Consider human equality and freedom. When the first
federal union was established no country on earth could be rated
democratic by present standards. The Thirteen States were the most
advanced, but though they declared "all men are created equal," they
restricted the vote to men of property, and they permitted slavery.
Almost no one in them then even suggested giving women any rights. The
history of our Federal Union has been the history of the elimination of
the exceptions to the great principle of equal liberty which, as Lincoln
said, "the great Republic ... lives by and keeps alive."

First, our Union was extended to include all white men by the
establishment of manhood suffrage. Next we extended it to the slaves --
though these new citizens still, to our shame, do not enjoy equal rights
in some states. And then we admitted even our mothers, sweethearts,
wives and daughters to the Union's full citizenship. Meanwhile public
schools were spreading out more than ever before in history, as were
other opportunities equally open to all. We are still far from the
ideal, but no form of government has ever brought nearly so much liberty
and equal dignity to so many millions as our Federal Union has already
done.

Turn to the economic side. In the first ten years of Federal Union those
Thirteen poverty-stricken States quadrupled their foreign trade. The
Union began with a debt load of $75,000,000 inherited from the
Confederation. Then it purchased Louisiana for $15 ,000,000, bought
Florida for $5,000,000 and borrowed $98,000,000 during the War of 1812.
But instead of accumulating debt the Federal Union was able to pay off
the debt so rapidly that, by 1835, it distributed a surplus of
$28,000,000.

THE ONE GREAT CHANGE THAT CAUSED
THE GREAT SUCCESS

How are you going to account for this astounding change from war alarms
to peace, from depression to prosperity, from failure to success?

Some say it was all due to economic factors, to the frontier, free land,
rich natural resources. But when the Confederation possessed all that
vast wilderness to the Mississippi River, it could not even borrow a
dollar.

Others attribute the success to great leaders we had then -- but
Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, were all alive under
the Confederation; yet even they could not make that system work.

Nor did success result from any change in human nature. The same
Americans were alive in 1786 and in 1790. But in 1786 they were getting
into more and more depression and disputes, and in 1790 they were
getting out.

How can you account for that astonishing transformation from failure to
success, except by attributing it to the one great change that had
occurred -- to the change in the basis of government from the sovereign
states to the sovereign citizens, to this "more perfect" application of
the principles of the Declaration of Independence?

And so we Americans who call ourselves Federal Unionists or Atlantic
Unionists today say to you now: How much longer are we going to waste
precious time, and treasure, and lives, fiddling along with the
diplomatic system's leagues, alliances, confederations, which have
already brought us two World Wars and a great depression, and now
threaten us with worse war, depression, dictatorship?

Why is it, we ask you, that this great American invention is the one
answer to the problem of peace which we Americans have neglected most?
Why is it that even now the boldest among our statesmen are rated bold
because they pro pose confederation -- a system which, though better
than an alliance or league -- has failed in the best conditions? Why
have we done so little to apply beyond our shores the 100 per cent
American principles which our fathers carried steadily on, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific?

True we have now -- at long last -- carried them beyond our Pacific
shore by admitting Alaska and Hawaii as states in the Union. We have
ended the long rule of two assumptions that never had any basis in the
Constitution -- that states of the Union must be connected by land, and
dominated by the white race. This is a most encouraging sign. But why
then should any Americans still shy at Atlantic Union? Since we can
federate with Alaska, a state that is only a few miles from Soviet
territory, why can we not federate with Norway and the German Federal
Republic which also adjoin the Soviet empire, to say nothing of such
nations as France which are far from Moscow's frontiers? Since we can
federate with the multi-racial Hawaiian Islands, why should we first go
through a confederate stage with the British Isles which are much closer
to Washington?

Why not at least attempt once to form an Atlantic federation before
saying that we can't -- or that we must try confederation first? Why not
try instead to transfer from our national democracies to a new Atlantic
Union democracy those same basic powers which the Thirteen States
transferred to the American Union -- since we have proved ever since
1789 that this makes astoundingly for peace, prosperity and freedom for
everyone?

Why not have the Atlantic Union guarantee, as does our own Union, that
all powers, not specifically given to the Federal Government, shall
remain in the hands of each state in it? Why not try to organize an
Atlantic Union government broadly on the same basis as our own
federation and all others -- with Legislature, Court and Executive? Why
not put representation in it on the same population basis as in our
Union, with the same safeguards that its Senate gives the smaller
states?

We run no risk in attempting this at the Atlantic Convention, we sign no
check in blank. No one can tell in advance what the details of such a
Constitution would provide. They could and should be worked out in the
Convention. We are committed to nothing the Convention does until we
have not only seen and studied the text of any Constitution it produces,
but ratified it after full discussion. If we think anything in it is too
risky, we can reject it then. We run no risk whatever in this process.
The only real risk we run lies in delaying further to try our hands at
federal union.

We, the free people of Atlantica, still possess the power to make the
world immensely safer for democracy simply by changing our minds, simply
by having the courage, the common sense, the vision, to do for our
children what the Virginians and the Pennsylvanians and the New Yorkers
had the courage, the common sense, the vision to do in 1787-1789 --
unite behind a common Bill of Rights in a Federal Union. Why should not
the Americans, Britons, French, Dutch, Canadians, and other Atlanticans
at least try to do this too ... today?

____

1. For clarity and brevity I am including in the Constitution the first
ten amendments. I consider them, moreover, as being practically part of
the original Constitution since it could not have been ratified had
there not been a tacit understanding to add them.

2. Historical Essays and Studies, Macmillan, London, p. 124.


