Gordon S. Wood and the Search for Liberal America

G_ ORDON S. Wood's The Creation of American Republic, 1776-1787, has done more than any other study in my professional lifetime to enrich our understanding of origins of United States Constitution. By re-creating both perceptions and anxieties of Revolutionary generation, Wood unfolded remarkable learning process that occurred at state level during war, and he demonstrated that federal principles enunciated in 1787 were conceptually impossible to men of I776. When they broke with Britain, Americans still cherished a and balanced constitution, a structure that was expected to embody fixed social orders within legislature and that also located sovereignty within itself. Largely because Pennsylvania conservatives and Massachusetts radicals disliked constitutional systems that legislating bodies (a convention in Pennsylvania, General Court in Massachusetts) tried to impose on them, this understanding broke down and something new emerged. The separation of powers gradually replaced mixed and balanced constitution. The most radical Americans attacked both ideas and preferred a simple, unicameral government, but despite early successes in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Vermont, they lost ground in 178os. Even in losing, they forced their opponents to redefine their arguments. Bicameralism remained American norm, but it could no longer be defended convincingly in British terms. The American upper house nowhere represented a distinct social order. With ratification of Massachusetts constitution in 1780, sovereignty also ceased to be an attribute of government. The Revolutionaries lodged it with people instead. In process they achieved what Wood calls, in a striking phrase, the disembodiment of government (p. 383). Only then could rather conservative gentlemen who gathered at Philadelphia in 1787 achieve a genuine breakthrough in federal relations. The British Empire had tried to meet important common needs by overriding traditional local rights. It collapsed because colonial patriots absolutely refused to concede sovereignty to Parliament. Not surprisingly, Congress and Articles of Confederation reversed these priorities by

Economic history · Political science · Pulp and paper industry · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Engineering · History

• In Defense of Progressive Legal Historiography

  Open Access•Laura Kalman•Law and History Review•2018

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