Forrest McDonald

States' Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876

States Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876. By Forrest McDonald. (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000. Pp. viii, 296.

E pluribus unum : the formation of the American Republic, 1776-1790

29.95.) The historiography of the issue of federalism, often referred to as states rights, is a lengthy list of specific case studies. Books and essays abound on Hamiltons bank proposal, MCulloch v. Maryland, and the nullification crisis, but no one has attempted to weave these numerous events into a continuing historical study of federalism. No one, that is, until Forrest McDonald. In the preface to his new book, McDonald writes that no book-length study of states rights as a whole has previously appeared (viii.). He then offers States Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876 as his attempt to fill that lacuna in the literature (viii.). The book is organized in chronological fashion. Chapter one deals with the revolutionary period and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Chapter nine-the last chapter-addresses Reconstruction and the implementation and interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In between 1776 and 1876, McDonald incorporates into a continuing narrative the historical events that historians previously have studied individually, such as Hamiltons bank proposal, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, Jacksons handling of the nullification crisis, the slavery issue, and the Marshall courts opinions in both the well-cited cases of Martin v. Hunters Lessee and Cohens v. Virginia and the little-studied Osborn v. Bank of the United States. He also includes events that traditionally have not been viewed as part of the states rights canon, such as Cherokee removal and post-Civil War railroad construction. From a content point of view, McDonalds work is complete. Some may complain, however, that McDonalds work does not bring anything new to the history of this debate. McDonald himself recognizes this and admits that this is essentially a work of synthesis, meaning that-though I studied the primary sources, documents showing what participants in the flow of events had to say-I relied mainly on the primary research of many historians (viii). The authors intention is to provide a narrative and analytical account of the larger contours of the history of the subject (viii). The strength of the work, however, does not lie in the simple recitation of the major historical events involving the issue of states rights. Rather, the strength of this book is the breadth of the analysis that McDonald displays. Often the current debate and analysis of the issue of states rights is limited to the decisions of the Supreme Court. That the Court has been and is an important party in this debate is an incontrovertible fact, but the Court has not been the only party. The issue of states rights permeates our history: the debate was inclusive, not exclusive. …

Colliding with the Past

Having won independence from England, America faced a new question: Would this be politically one nation, or would it not? E Pluribus Unum is a spirited look at how that question came to be answered. That the American people introduced a governmental system adequate to check the very forces unleashed by the Revolutionthis, writes Professor McDonald, was the miracle of the age...The French, the Russians, the Italians, the Germans, all the planets peoples in their turn, would become so unrestrained as to lose contact with sanity. The Americans might have suffered a similar history had they followed the lead of those who, in 1787 and 1788, spoke in the name ...of popular rights. But there were giants on the earth in those days, and they spoke in the name of the nation...

Alexander Hamilton: A Biography.

Early in the twentieth century, Carl Becker published a History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776 (1909), in which he formulated the thesis that the American Revolution had in actuality been two revolutions: one to obtain home rule, or independence, and the other to determine who should rule at home, or democracy. The second of these, as Becker depicted it, was essentially a struggle between haves and have-nots. A few years after Becker, Charles A. Beard wrote An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) and An Economic Interpretation of Jeffersonian Democracy (1915), in which, with some twists, he extended Beckers thesis to comprehend the rest of the Revolutionary epoch. To Beard, the establishment of the Constitution was something of a counter-revolution, engineered by affluent but suffering holders of personal as opposed to real property, mainly in the form of depreciated certificates of the Revolutionary War debts. Its design was to reverse the radical democratic tendencies the Revolution had un-

We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution

The founders of the American republic were ardently concerned with the judgment of posterity. Had they known what a fickle muse Clio would prove to be, they might have been more anxious. The making of myths and legends, complete with a hagiology and demonology, is inherent in the process of evolution toward nationhood. Consequently, individual actors in the original drama have often been consigned by History to roles they did not actually play, and the most important of them have played shifting roles, being heroes in one generation and villains in the next. It is therefore not surprising that Alexander Hamilton-along with Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison-has had his ups and downs at the hands of historians.

Novus Ordo Seclorum: the Intellectual Origins of the Constitution

Charles A. Bears An Economic Interpretation of the United States Constitution was a work of such powerful persuasiveness as to alter the course of American historiography. No historian who followed in studying the making of the Constitution was entirely free from Beards radical interpretation of the document as serving the economic interests of the Framers as members of the propertied class. Forrest McDonalds We the People was the first major challenge to Beards thesis. This superbly researched and documented volume restored the Constitution as the work of principled and prudential men. It did much to invalidate the crude economic determinism that had become endemic in the writing of American history. We the People fills in the details that Beard had overlooked in his fragmentary book. MacDonalds work is based on an exhaustive comparative examination of the economic biographies of the 55 members of the Constitutional Convention and the 1,750 members of the state ratifying conventions. His conclusion is that on the basis of evidence, Beards economic interpretation does not hold. McDonald demonstrates conclusively that the interplay of conditioning or determining factors at work in the making of the Constitution was extremely complex and cannot be rendered intelligible in terms of any single system of interpretation. McDonalds classic work, while never denying economic motivation as a factor, also demonstrates how the rich cultural and political mosaic of the colonies was an independent and dominant factor in the decision making that led to the first new nation. In its pluralistic approach to economic factors and analytic richness, We the People is both a major work of American history and a significant document in the history of ideas. It continues to be an essential volume for historians, political scientists, economists, and American studies specialists.