Gordon S. Wood is an American institution. He is one of the most influential historians of early America that has ever lived. In “Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic,” the third volume in the epic Oxford History of the United States, Wood explores the tumultuous decades between the ratification of the Constitution and the end of the War of 1812. I’ve read about this period often before and sometimes in great depth, but never have I read a narrative of these events so incisive and illuminating.
Washington Irving wrote his classic short story “Rip Van Winkle” in 1819. It tells the tale of a Dutch-American villager who falls asleep shortly before the American Revolution and awakens twenty years later to discover social, economic and political life has been completely transformed. The king is gone, a new republic has taken his place, social customs and etiquette are unrecognizable, and the population has quadrupled. Americans of the period recognized that they had lived through unprecedented times. Wood seeks to explain how and why it all happened.
The new federal Constitution was, according to Wood, “intended to restrain the excesses of democracy and protect minority rights from overbearing majorities in the state legislatures,” the exact argument put forth in “Original Meanings” by Jack Rakove, his Pulitzer Prize-winning analysis of the making of the Constitution. James Madison, “probably the most intellectually creative political figure America has ever produced,” in Wood’s lofty estimation, certainly intended it that way. He designed the Constitution specifically “to protect Americans’ rights from the abusive power of the state legislatures.”
It is important to recall, Wood says, that many Americans in the 1790s took seriously the prospect of some sort of monarchy developing in America. Moreover, he says, “Many Federalist leaders believed that a strong measure of monarchy was just what republican America needed.” Such fears and expectations laid the foundation for the intense political warfare that erupted between the Federalists and Republicans during this period. The two sides had dramatically opposing visions for America. The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, wanted what Wood calls a “consolidated heroic European-like state” that aped the institutions and actions of England and France and the other great powers. In particular, Hamilton sought to emulate the English system of funded debt together with its banking structure and its market in public securities. The Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, sought something entirely new and more placid – a humble and peaceful republic of mostly yeoman farmers with no national debt or standing army. If it sounds embarrassingly naïve, that’s because it was.
The Revolutionary War left the country $79 million in debt. The new federal government owed foreigners – mainly French, Spanish, and Dutch bankers – $12 million, while domestic bondholders held a staggering $42 million. Meanwhile, the thirteen states combined held another $25 million, which had led state legislatures to dramatically increase taxes. The upshot was economic dislocation and ultimately domestic turmoil, including Shay’s Rebellion. Hamilton’s ambitious plan was to consolidate all of these obligations into a single national funded debt. The interest payments would consume 40% of federal revenue. To manage the system the government created the Bank of the United States (in 1791 there were only four banks in the entire United States). It would serve as the foundation in creating Hamilton’s “grand vision of a powerful, integrated, and wealthy war-making nation,” according to Wood. Although Wood says that Hamilton’s historical reputation as the prophet of America’s industrial greatness is “somewhat exaggerated,” he concedes there is no doubt that Hamilton’s program laid the basis for the supremacy of the national government over the states. Indeed, by the mid-1790s the federal government was raising over $6 million in total tax revenue compared to just $500,000 by all the states combined. Interestingly, in what Wood calls his “biggest political mistake,” Hamilton focused his revenue generation system on excise taxes rather than heavy protective tariffs to support nascent American manufacturing, thus alienating the politically powerful and growing constituency of artisans and manufacturers.
Jefferson and Madison found Hamilton’s vision disconcerting. The Virginians had hoped the new federal government would be a judicial-like umpire that worked to mitigate the excesses of popularly elected state legislatures. But the Hamiltonians were creating a modern European-type state, with an elaborate bureaucracy, a significant standing army, perpetual debts, and a powerful independent executive. It appeared to them that the whole republican dream was being strangled in the cradle. To them, “it was the struggle against the corrupt monarchism of the 1760s and 1770s all over again,” according to Wood.
The French Revolution would further drive a wedge between the Federalists and Republicans. At first, American enthusiasm for the French Revolution was almost universal. But as events in Paris grew more radical, Federalists began to see in France the terrifying possibilities of what might happen in America if popular power were allowed to run free. Left-wing Democratic-Republican Societies cropped up all over the country in emulation of the Jacobin Clubs in France. But the Federalists were able to hold their ground. First, the increasingly atheistic tone of the French Revolution pushed influential clergy from all denominations into the Federalist camp. Second, the violence of the Whiskey Rebellion and the Reign of Terror shocked and angered many Americans. Finally, Hamilton’s innovative economic program was “working wonders,” according to Wood. Federal assumption of the state debts allowed the states to lower tax rates 50% to 90%. After a decade of economic malaise, American consumer imports skyrocketed from $23 million in 1790 to $63 million in 1795. Wood says that this “golden shower” of prosperity undermined much of the Republican opposition to the Federalist’s program.
“Except for the era of the Civil War,” Wood writes, “the last several years of the eighteenth century were the most politically contentious in United States history.” Every aspect of American life became politicized. For much of the 1790s, the Federalist’s retained their political dominance. They were buoyed by the booming economy, Washington’s unassailable popularity, fear aroused by the bloodthirsty anarchy of the Jacobins, and the diplomatic humiliations exposed by the XYZ Affair. And then, Wood says, just as their power was at its zenith, the Federalists committed a “disastrous mistake” – the Alien and Sedition Acts. Indeed, Wood writes, “The Alien and Sedition Acts so thoroughly destroyed the Federalists’ historical reputation that it is unlikely it can ever be recovered.” In terms that the modern American reader will find chillingly familiar, the Sedition Act made it a crime “to write, print, utter, or publish … any false, scandalous, and malicious writing or writings.” It was the eighteenth century equivalent of “disinformation” and “fake news.” Twenty-five Republican journalists and editors were ultimately arrested; seventeen were indicted and ten were convicted and punished. Meanwhile, Hamilton spectacularly over-reached in his enthusiastic command of the proposed 12,000-man “New Army” created by Congress to meet a feared French invasion.
According to Wood, Jefferson personified the so-called “Revolution of 1800,” the revolutionary transformation from aristocratic Federalist rule to democratic Republican government. To this day, he says, the third president remains “the supreme spokesman for the nation’s noblest ideals and highest aspirations … This slaveholding aristocrat ended up becoming the most important apostle for liberty and democracy in American history.” His primary objective in 1800 was to reduce what the Republicans believed to be the overweening and dangerous power of the Federalist government. In fact, according to Wood, Jefferson and the Republicans aimed to roll back the power of the federal government all the way to the old Articles of Confederation. All tax inspectors and collectors were eliminated. Diplomatic missions were reduced to just three (Britain, France, and Spain). The military budget was cut in half. The army was reduced to just 172 officers. “For most citizens,” Wood says, “the federal presence was reduced to the delivery of the mail.” Above all, Jefferson sought to eliminate Hamilton’s program of public debt, which the Republicans associated with a corrupt system of privilege and patronage. Even after raising $15 million to finance the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson was able to cut the $80 million federal debt in half during his eight years in office. “The Jeffersonian Revolution was an extraordinary and unprecedented experiment in governing without the traditional instruments of power,” Wood says. Jefferson ultimately achieved many of his Republican goals – and subsequently left the United States government weaker than at any time in its history. It’s certainly a dubious legacy.
As war raged across Europe, Americans did their utmost to remain neutral – and to profit from that neutrality. The Royal Navy controlled the seas. The French and Spanish were forced to employ neutral ships to carry their goods. The re-export of goods (also known as the “carrying trade”) allowed American merchants to absorb nearly all the foreign trade from the French and Spanish West Indies to Europe. Between 1793 and 1807 American ship tonnage tripled and the total value of all American re-exports totaled nearly half-a-billion dollars. This opportunity allowed the United States to quickly emerge as the largest carrier of neutral goods in the world. In 1790 American ships had carried only about 40% of the value of all of the goods involved in American foreign trade, about $43 million. By 1807 American ships were carrying 92% of that trade, which had exploded to $246 million. The British sought to disrupt this trade and vehemently contested the American argument that “free ships made free goods.” The British emphasized the Rule of 1756, which stipulated that commerce prohibited in time of peace (e.g. American ships had been prohibited from entering ports in the French West Indies) was also prohibited in time of war. Jefferson and the agricultural southern Republicans fiercely defended American commerce even though it was the mainly Federalist northeast that profited from it. They were confident that the extensive trade relationship between the two countries – Britain consumed nearly all US exports and provided 80% of American imports – meant that the British would be susceptible to American economic coercion. Wood argues that the Republicans hoped to use this pressure to elicit political (rather than economic) concessions and cripple the British monarchy.
The most contentious issue between the United States and Great Britain in this period was impressment – the capture of suspected British deserters serving on American sailing vessels. Perhaps as many as 5,000 men were seized during the war. Wood writes that the British practice was humiliating and smacked of neo-colonialism. It was “the rawest and most contentious issue” dividing the two countries and was “a glaring example of America’s lack of independence as a nation.”
According to Wood, the War of 1812 was the “strangest,” “most important,” and “most unpopular” war in American history.” The country was completely unprepared for this completely unnecessary war. In 1812 the army had fewer than seven thousand regular soldiers. The navy was comprised of only sixteen vessels. Meanwhile, the British Army had nearly a quarter million battle-hardened troops, while the vaunted Royal Navy, the most powerful naval force in the world, was comprised over six hundred ships in active service. “From beginning to end,” Wood writes, “the war seemed as ludicrous as its diminutive commander-in-chief.” The conflict was a deeply and divisive partisan struggle. The vote on the declaration of war was the closest in American history. Ironically, it was Jefferson’s Republican Party – the party most ideologically opposed to war, taxes, debt, and executive power – that dragged a reluctant country into war. Republicans in Congress consistently voted down measures to expand the army and navy or impose critical internal taxes while simultaneously voting to go to war. By 1814 the country was bankrupt and had defaulted on its national debt obligations. Exports had plummeted to $7 million while imports, a critical source of tax revenue, had sunk to less than $13 million (in 1807 the figures had been $108 million and $138 million, respectively). As disastrous as the war had gone, Wood says that Madison remained remarkable sanguine about events. “It was a Republican war that Madison sought to wage in a republican fashion,” according to Wood. That is, without an expensive build up in European-style monarchical state power.
The war ended without the British addressing any of the issues of neutral rights or impressment that had caused the conflict. Wood says that the war simultaneously settled nothing and everything. Although the ostensible causes of the war were never mentioned, the United States successfully preserved and defended its independence, sovereignty, and its grand revolutionary experiment in limited republican government. For as awful as the war went for the Americans, it is worth noting that today fifty-seven towns and counties throughout the United States are named after the war’s chief architect, James Madison, more than any other president.
“Empire of Liberty” is a remarkable book. It’s incredibly informative, highly detailed, and delightfully readable.
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