Two Federalist Constitutions of Empire

Abstract

This essay, for a symposium on the Federalist Constitution, examines two distinct imperial Federalist constitutions, both with roots in prerevolutionary thought and practice. Both constitutions embraced expanded federal power but sought to use it for divergent ends. One constitution, the "constitution of constraint," sought to use federal authority to discipline recalcitrant states and U.S. citizens, whose selfish and shortsighted behavior, Federalists believed, jeopardized national interests. The second, "the constitution of empowerment," sought to wield the nation’s bolstered financial and military resources against perceived external threats and enemies.

This too-tidy dichotomy imposes an artificial divide on a more muddled past, but it helps explain, to my mind, the two constitutions' divergent receptions and fates. I argue that people outside the federal government and the political elite routinely seized on Federalist constitutionalism to serve their own ends, and, as a result, the constitution of constraint largely failed while the constitution of empowerment flourished. In one sense, this outcome marked a Federalist failure, as the Federalists failed to anticipate how poorly antidemocratic efforts would fare in a political system with ample opportunities for popular control and dissent. But it was also a Federalist triumph of a sort, since the Federalists had promoted, and then campaigned on, the new Constitution's promise of empowerment. In that sense, though subsequent constitutional history unfolded in ways that the Federalists did not envision and anticipate, it was also a future that they chose.

Keywords: Federalists, constitutionalism, empire, United States