Federalism:

The Lost Tradition?

Charles S. McCoy
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many American historians decided that the
accounts by which people in the United States understood their past were unrealistic, subject to romantic
distortions, and chauvinistic. Even though some stories were well intentioned, they were false and must
be rejected. One well-known example is Parson Weems'story of George Washington as a boy cutting down
the cherry tree and, when questioned by his father, saying, "I cannot tell a lie." In the process of "realistic"

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reinterpretation and muckraking, however, these historians threw out many real babies with the surplus
of romantic bath water. A case in point is the tradition offederalism that shaped American history,
permeated the experience of the men who wrote the United States Constitution, and underlay every facet
of our social order. The so-called "realists" went too far and tossed out an important part of the reality
that is America. Can the federal tradition be recovered and placed again at the focus of American
political thought, or is it a lost tradition?

T" 1
1 hrough the efforts of Daniel Elazar and other scholars,1 the federal
tradition is gradually re-emerging out of the mists of forgetfulness. That is
only a beginning. The task of researching, writing about, and publishing
accounts of federalism has been hard enough, but even more difficult has
been the task of getting the "romantic pessimists," now victims of a collective
amnesia, to recognize, evaluate, and include the federal tradition as a part
of the background of the American Constitution and continuing political
order.
FADS IN HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION
Forrest McDonald provides an important clue to the loss of the federal
tradition that has occurred in this century among political historians. In
the preface to his book on the intellectual origins of the United States
Constitution, McDonald observes, "Fashions in historical interpretation
come and-go."2 He then proceeds, unintentionally, to illustrate his point
by failing to include the federal tradition as prominent throughout the
colonial period, providing the context of political experience for most of
the members of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and clearly to be
included among the intellectual origins of the Constitution. He goes even
further, however, by claiming that the framers of the Constitution "fashioned

'Daniel Elazar was a distinguished professor of political science at Temple University. He founded
and directed the Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple and, through his friendships and through
Center conferences developed a circle of scholars interested in the federal tradition.
Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Sechrum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University
of Kansas Press, 1985), p. vii.
© Publius: The Journal of Federalism 31:2 (Spring 2001)
1
2 Publius/Spring 2001

a frame of government that necessitated a redefinition of most of the terms

in which the theory and ideology of civic humanism had been discussed.
Into the bargain, they introduced an entirely new concept to the discourse,
that of federalism."3
Federalism! New in 1787? Only someone who has drunk deeply of Lethe's
waters of forgetfulness could make such a statement. McDonald along with
many other historians of the twentieth century is following one of the
fashions that has led successively to a focus first on one and then on another
aspect of the past at the expense of a more complete view, with a resulting
amnesia about some of the crucial, and obvious, elements.

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McDonald enumerates a procession of fads adopted by historians
interpreting the making of the U.S. Constitution. Among them is Charles
Beard's famous economic interpretation of the motives of the Founding
Fathers, followed by the rejection of Beard's thesis as too one-sided and
then by McDonald's own modification of Beard's interpretation, placing at
the center "the wheeling and dealing and the interplay between politics
and economics;" this view is succeeded by the fad focusing on the central
role of ideology, an interpretation espoused by Bernard Bailyn and J. G. A.
Pocock; then there is Douglass Adair's emphasis on "the passion for fame
among the founders," followed by Louis Hartz, who put forward the thesis
naming John Locke as the exclusive source of the political system of the
United States. McDonald might also have mentioned the rebuttal to Hartz's
fantastic view by Garry Wills, who shifts attention to David Hume, and so on
to other fashions.4 Among the fads he fails to note, one to which he adheres,
is the strange fashion in historical interpretation that produced the eclipse
of the federal tradition.
By contrast with the procession of twentieth century historians
unacquainted with the federal tradition, we find a very different view among
historians in the late nineteenth century. The federal element in the
heritage of American politics was remembered quite clearly. In an article
on "The Origins of American Federalism," published in 1895, William C.
Morey, a political historian at the University of Rochester, asserted:
The origin of the forms of the federal government presents no great
historical difficulties to one who has carefully studied the constitutional
history of the early States and colonies. He finds that the central
government of the United States, in its general structure and its various

'Ibid., p. 262.
4
See Charles S. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (New York, 1913);
Forrest McDonald, EPluribus Unum: TheFormation of the American Republic, 1776-1790 (Indianapolis: Liberty
Press, 1979); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Belknap Press,
1967); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavelian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican
Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An
Interpretation ofAmerican Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955);
and Garry Wills, Explaining America: The Federalist (Garden City: Doubleday, 1978).
Federalism: The Lost Tradition? 3

branches, is scarcely more than a reproduction on a higher plane of the

governmental forms existing in the previous States, and more remotely in
the early colonies.5

Most of the authors enumerated by McDonald share his participation in

a widely prevalent style in academia: enchantment with scholarly
specialization that devotes expert attention to one facet of a subject and
then assumes, overtly or covertly, that this limited focus is adequate to
describe the whole. As a result, many distinguished scholars make no small
errors on the way toward grand fallacies. Enclosed within their
specialization, they are caught up in something that is more than a fad. It

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is more like a severe case of constricted focus that leaves them with a limited
perspective on the forces shaping the culture and society to which they are
devoting scholarly attention and in which they live.
In this era of higher education, scholars cannot avoid some degree of
specialization. At the same time, however, it is important to scan the
surrounding territory in order to maintain a breadth of perspective and
avoid being caught in a fading fashion. My own journey took me into the
study of federal theology, but I became aware of intriguing relations to
political federalism. That wider awareness enabled me to appreciate the
work of Dan Elazar and have my suspicions confirmed that there were
close relations between federal theology and federal politics as they
developed. Whereas Elazar had started from the study of political federalism
and discovered theological federalism, I had studied federal theology and
ethics and learned gradually about its close connections to political
federalism.
A JOURNEY WITH SURPRISING DISCOVERIES
During my doctoral work at Yale University, I became interested in the
covenant as a possible center around which to organize my studies in
theology and Christian ethics. My main advisors, Professors H. Richard
Niebuhr, Robert L. Calhoun, and Roland Bainton, suggested that I explore
the covenant theology of the Reformed tradition in the seventeenth century.
In my research following the lead they had given, I was amazed to discover
that the period after the main movements of the Reformation until the
Enlightenment had been largely dismissed by historians of theology. One
of these scholars characterized the era as a time of "a new Protestant
scholasticism, far less imaginative and intellectually curious than its medieval
prototype," a time of theology that could be characterized as "obscurantist
scholasticism."6 My own research revealed that even a cursory knowledge
5
WilIiam C. Morey, "The Sources of American Federalism," The Annals ofthe American Academy ofPolitical
and Social Science (September 1895): 197.
6
Albert C. Outler, "The Reformation and Classical Protestantism," The Vitality of the Christian Tradition
,ed. George F. Thomas (New York: Harper and Bros., 1944), p. 135.
4 Publius/Spring 2001

of Reformed theology between 1550 and 1800 would render such a view
impossible. Much of the theology was non-scholastic or even anti-scholastic,
and some of it was creative and interesting. The greatest mistake, however,
had been the neglect of movements in theology and ethics at a time when
the political and economic patterns of the modern West were taking shape.
The most interesting figure that I discovered was Johannes Cocceius
(1603-1669), the greatest of the federal or covenantal theologians, a major
biblical scholar of the time, and a forerunner of the critical understanding
of Scripture. The word "federal", I learned, is derived from the hatin foedus,
which means covenant. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Cocceius.7 In

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the process, I studied the development of the federal theology in Europe
and America. Though mentioned only briefly in the dissertation, many
connections were discovered between theological and political federalism.
My further research, aided in part by Daniel Elazar's work, enabled me to
learn just how closely they were intertwined, both in Europe and in America.
As I traced the development of political and theological federalism from
Switzerland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, England, and Scodand to
Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and others during the colonial
period, I came eventually to John Witherspoon, to his student, James
Madison, and, of course, to the formation of the United States Constitution.
As I explored the life and work of Madison, one of the greatest shocks of all
hit me. In an article published in 1958 by Ralph Ketcham, a University of
Chicago professor and authority on Madison and the era of the American
Revolution and Constitution, he reported the results of an investigation
seeking the origins of Madison's view of human nature. Ketcham had looked
in many directions-to Locke, to Montesquieu, to Aristotle and Plato, and
to Thucydides-and had come to the conclusion that we simply do not know
where Madison got his notion of human nature. It was apparent that
Ketcham was unaware of the strong tradition of federalism in the colonies,
nor did it occur to him that Madison might have acquired his view of human
nature from his tutors in Virginia and especially from his education at the
College of New Jersey under Witherspoon, as well as from the prevailing
climate of theological and political federalism.8 This experience prepared
me for the sad discovery that most historians of the U. S. Constitution know
little of the federal background to the Constitution and to the structure of
American society. For mainline political science, federalism became as much
a lost tradition in political history as in theology and ethics.
Daniel Elazar was an outstanding exception. Through his own research
and the programs of his Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple
University, Elazar and a small network of scholars began to deliver the federal
'Charles S. McCoy, The Covenant Theology of Johannes Cocceius (Ph.D. Dissertation: Yale University, 1957;
Ann Arbor, 1965).
"Ralph L. Kelcham, "James Madison and the Nature of Man," Journal of the History of Ideas XIX (January
1958).
Federalism: The Lost Tradition? 5

tradition from obscurity and also from the obscurantism that prevailed
among political historians. That latter task has proved to be very difficult.
But the price of ignoring the history of federalism has been high.
Understanding the way federalism developed throws important light on
what the men who produced the Constitution brought with them to
Philadelphia from their practical experience in a federal political order
and what they knew about the strengths and weaknesses of previous
commonwealths with different forms of confederation. Not only does
knowledge of the federal tradition help explain how the work required to
hammer out the Constitution could be completed in so short a time, but it

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also demonstrates why their work has proved durable. They had already
the experience of organizing the states on the basis of the inherited federal
pattern and operating under the flawed federalism of the Articles of
Confederation and the Continental Congress. They were heirs of 180 years
of federalism through the colonial period, and some of them studied the
longer federal tradition and the many forms of compact government
included in the tradition. It was not the newness of their insights but their
wisdom and experience in drawing on the diverse federal tradition that
gave this society and its constitution their stability and strength.
A stubborn core of constitutional scholars denies that there is a federal
tradition and refuses to make use of the literature about that political stream
emerging from the research of Elazar and his colleagues. A similar condition
of invincible ignorance prevails in the fields of theology and ethics.
FAD OR POLITICAL MENTALITY
Reflecting on the strange absence of the federal tradition in most American
scholarship related to the U. S. Constitution, it seems more than a passing
fashion and more of a pervasive attitude. Academics in the United States
have acquired the habit of looking to Europe in order to understand what
is going on in America. In theology, in literary values, in the social sciences,
and in historical perspectives, the views of European scholars are given
priority and are quoted as validating authorities, while the traditions and
the views of Americans are often neglected. This peculiar phenomenon I
call the "the colonial mentality," a cultural inferiority complex that pervades
much scholarly work in America.
In Christian theology and biblical studies since World War II, for example,
American scholars in those fields have more often divided themselves into
camps representing one or another German scholar rather than learning
also from the creative work of theologians in the United States and
elsewhere. The religious situation in the United States is often interpreted
from the perspectives of Europeans. As a consequence, views applicable to
Europe are accepted as describing what is taking place in America. The
dichotomy between theory and practice, dominant in continental thought,
6 Publius/Spring 2001

has been widely accepted among American thinkers, while the stronger
views of American pragmatists were ignored until a German philosopher,
Karl Otto Apel, discovered Charles Sanders Peirce and informed Americans
that he was worth studying. Tom Wolfe has insisted that the acceptance of
European values in architecture and literature has undermined the strength
of American design, poetry, and the novel. The colonial mentality has
become deeply ingrained in American patterns of thought and has been
around over a long period of time.
For example, William Gladstone, British prime minister, called the
Constitution of the United States "the most wonderful work ever struck off

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at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." Americans usually regard
this as praise for the ingenuity of the Founding Fathers and fail to note that
the English statesman was actually contrasting the gradual emergence of
the "constitution" of Great Britain with the sudden production of the
American document. Gladstone was suggesting that Britain has history and
tradition, while the United States has neither.9
Like many Europeans, Gladstone misunderstood America. The British
colonists were heirs of the same history and traditions as those who stayed
behind in Europe, but with the difference and addition of 180 years of
experience in the New Wo rid prior to 1787. Those Americans who gathered
in Philadelphia brought the rich traditions of the colonial past in addition
to the heritage from Europe and from Hebraic-Hellenist-Roman cultures.
The relation of Americans to the past in the period 1776 to 1787 was in no
way a blank slate, nor was it shaped exclusively by European thought or
practice. While it is true that the Constitution was composed between late
May and mid- September, 1787, the members of the Convention were
drawing on traditions reaching back through the colonial period and Europe
to the ancient world. The most important element in their perspective was
their experience and practice of the federal tradition as shaped in the
colonial period and in the states during the pre-constitutional era.
During the decades prior to the American Revolution and leading up to
1787, there was what one writer calls a "great debate over liberty and order"
in the public arena.10 No one was a more industrious and informed
participant in this discussion than James Madison, especially concerning
the federal tradition. Madison attended the College of New Jersey (now
Princeton University) from 1768 to 1772, studying there with John
Witherspoon, president of the college, learned federalist in theology and
political philosophy, and ardent advocate of freedom from Britain. In 1775,
Horace Walpole wrote, "Cousin America has eloped with a Presbyterian
parson."11 Cousin America was the British colonies, and the Presbyterian

'William E. Gladstone, "Kin Beyond the Sea," The North American Review 127 (September 1878): 185.
'"Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 88.
"Quoted in Martha Lou Lemmon Stohlman.yoftn Witherspoon: Parson, Politician, Patriot (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1976), p. 15.
Federalism: The Lost Tradition? 7

parson was John Witherspoon, who traveled through the colonies urging
freedom from Britain.
After Madison returned to Virginia from Princeton, he continued his
studies of theology and political thought as he began his career in public
life. His study and experience led him to be very critical of the Articles of
Confederation and to seek a convention to revise that constitution. In the
months before going to Philadelphia in May 1787, he gave careful attention
to confederations of the past that are part of the federal tradition, seeking
to discover their strengths and weaknesses. He had Jefferson send him
books from Paris, and he went by Princeton on his way to Philadelphia to

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get Witherspoon's advice. Madison illustrates and confirms the view of Carl
Van Doren: "The delegates both from former habits and present reasons
preferred a federated republic to a consolidated nation."12 The results of
the "great debate over liberty and order," as it is understood by Madison in
The Federalist,13 is that, given the realities of human nature, liberty will
inevitably lead to factions seeking their own interests and can be dealt with
only by abolishing liberty or controlling the factions (see Federalist 10). In
Federalists, he holds that a strong government can control factions, indeed,
any power, by checking them through "opposite and rival interests," that is,
"by a judicious modification and mixture of the federal principle."14
SOURCES OF FEDERALISM
Political order that is founded on covenants has a long, interesting, and
diverse lineage going back even beyond the covenants binding together
the Hebrew tribes from the time of Moses to the fall of the monarchies, to
the Athenian Confederacy, and to the thought of Augustine, who held that
a commonwealth was bound together by a common love rather than being
defined byjustice as taught by Roman philosophers. Throughout the Middle
Ages, Roman law replaced, and obscured, these examples of federalism
from the ancient world, though the practices of the German tribes, the
compacts found in the Hanseatic League, and the Swiss Confederation of
1291 show that elements of federalism were present within feudal society.15
Modern federalism emerged in Switzerland as the recovery of the Bible
with its emphasis on covenant was combined with the political practice
derived from Teutonic tribal covenants. The first treatise combining
theological and political federalism came from Heinrich Bullinger of Zurich
I2
Carl Van Doren, The Great Rehearsal: The Story of the Making and Ratifying of the Constitution of the
United States (New York: Viking Press, 1948), p. 70.
l3
The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, With an introduction and
commentary by Garry Wills (New York: Bantam Books, 1982).
"Ibid., pp. 263,265. In Federalist 18-20, Madison reports the results of his study of previous governments
in the federal tradition and gives the reason for his research: "I make no apology for having dwelt so long
on the contemplation of these federal precedents. Experience is the oracle of truth" (p. 98).
15
See Daniel J. Elazar, From Biblical Covenant to Modem Federalism: The Federal Theological Bridge (Philadelphia:
The Center for the Study of Federalism, 1980), passim; Daniel J. Elazar and John Kincaid, eds., The Covenant
Connection: From Federal Theology to Modern Federalism (Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000).
8 Publius/Spring 2001

(1534), which initiated a tradition spreading from Switzerland to Germany,

France, the Netherlands, Scotland, England, and America, with elements
gradually appearing elsewhere.10
The federal form of government was brought first to the British colonies
by the Pilgrims, who established the government of Plymouth by means of
the Mayflower Compact. It came over with the Puritans, whose federalism
was the basis of the Massachusetts Bay colony and spread rapidly throughout
New England. Scottish settlers brought federalism over to New Jersey and
the middle colonies, and John Locke infused compact thought into the
charter of the Carolinas. The federalism that came from Europe was

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probably reinforced by the tribal confederations the settlers found among
the native Americans they sometimes worked with and sometimes fought.
Political order as rooted in covenants (remember that the word "federal" is
derived from the Latin foedus, meaning covenant) received one of its most
distinctive forms in the U. S. Constitution of 1787.
The strong tradition of colonial federalism as the most immediate source
of American federalism was obvious to political scientists of the nineteenth
century like William Morey, as noted above, but was forgotten by the scholars
of the twentieth century. When one considers this strong federal heritage
and the prominence Alexis de Tocqueville gives to federalism in Democracy
in America11 as one of the most striking characteristics of the United States,
it seems strange how litde attention many historians of the U. S. Constitution
devote to its roots in the federalism of the colonial period and to the strong
federalism embodied in the Reformed tradition in Europe. Even more,
Carl J. Friedrich called federalism the fastest growing political system in the
twentieth century.18
The eclipse of the federal tradition among scholars of the Constitution
may, in the end, be not so much intellectual fads or forgetfulness or a colonial
mentality as it is that federalism is the societal atmosphere which Americans
breathe. Asfishare unlikely to notice the water in which they are immersed,
so Americans do not notice the federal medium of their existence. Or again,
federalism for Americans is like a pair of spectacles through which they
view everything; they see things through their federal heritage but may not
see it.
Although the notion of federalism dominated the experience of
American leaders in the era of the Articles of Confederation and the federal
16
See Charles S. McCoy and J. Wayne Baker, Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the
Covenantal Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), for a translation of Bullinger's
seminal treatise, a brief history of the development of federalism in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries, and a bibliography on the federal tradition.
"See, for example, Delba Winthrop, "Tocqueville on Federalism," Publius: The Journal of Federalism 6
(Summer 1976): 93, where the author writes, "it does not seem strange to Americans that any book
concerning American democracy should be addressed extensively to the phenomenon of federalism.
But one such book, frequently cited as authoritative, is, on reflection, somewhat strange in its extensive
treatment of federalism-Tocqueville's Democracy in America."
18
CarlJ. Friedrich, Trends of Federalism in Theory and Practice (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), p. 14.
Federalism: The Lost Tradition? 9

Constitution, it is so much a part of the climate of opinion then and now

that historians for the most part presuppose it rather that "seeing" it. Many
historians of the era regard it as the name of a political party or the era
surrounding the making of the Constitution, not the name of a tradition
from which the era and the party drew its name. They lack the richness of
the federal tradition as an interpretive tool for the Constitution and the
society shaped by that document.
LOOKING FOR WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN FOUND:
THE KANGAROO SYNDROME

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Among the puzzles today, one concern is why many scholars, who in recent
decades have written about the creation of the American Constitution and
government, have ignored the origins of federalism, and have failed even
to mention the extensive literature about the development of the federal
tradition. For those of us who watch children's programs on television, it
might remind us of the episode in "Captain Kangaroo" in which the Captain
has lost his watch. While the Captain searches furiously in every possible
place, Dancing Bear has already found the watch and is holding it up in
front of the Captain's face. He, however, is too busy looking for what is lost
to notice that it has been found.
Once the federal tradition had become lost, questions arose about the
origins of the federalism permeating the era when the U.S. Constitution
emerged. Some scholars denied that a problem existed and said that
federalism was the "necessary" solution for the thirteen colonies, a black
box answer that requires the further question, "Why was federalism
necessary?" A few scholars, with Elazar among the most prominent and
prolific, began the research that uncovered the fascinating development of
theological and political federalism and made it clear that the federalism
of the constitutional era was necessary because it was already built into the
governments, the cultural mind set, and the experience of people and
leaders.
Other historians of the Constitution have wondered about the origins of
federalism. They have, however, neither done the research to answer the
question of origins with accuracy and comprehensiveness nor bothered to
listen to those who have done the research and published their findings.
This group illustrates the "Captain Kangaroo" syndrome-looking for
something that is dangling in front of their noses. Ralph Ketcham, as noted
above, exemplified this syndrome in his frustrated search for the sources of
Madison's understanding of human nature.
Other illustrations of this phenomenon appear in three volumes of
political history dealing with the United States Constitution of 1787: (1)
Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins
10 Publius/Spring 2001

and Development;19 (2) Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic,
1776-1787,20 and (3) Samuel H. Beer, To Make a Nation: The Rediscovery of
American Federalism.2*
Although each book exhibits diligent scholarship in most areas covered,
all three treatments seem unaware of the literature describing and exploring
the federalism underlying and informing the discussions and negotiations
from which the Constitution of 1787 emerged. All three assume or state
explicitly that the U. S. Constitution provides a new understanding of
political order that is without precedent, though not in quite the extreme
form affirmed by Forest McDonald. The central role of Madison is

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recognized, but the authors seem as ill equipped as Ketcham to understand
the sources of Madison's views. Strangest of all, none of these authors
exhibits interest in how the term "federal" could so dominate the views of
all participants as to give the name to the entire era. They are, indeed, fish
unaware of the waters of federalism in which they live today and in which
the American leaders of the 1780s lived.
The detail with which Kelly and Harbison describe the emergence of the
Constitution from the colonial period through the adoption of state
constitutions and the Articles of Confederation to the actions of the
Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia is impressive. The interpretation given,
however, makes it clear that the authors see the leaders moving through a
thicket of detailed decisions with accumulating precedents toward a new
political order. A larger historical frame in which the origins and
development of federalism, and some of its continuing implications, are
lacking.
Though the cover promises to describe the "origins and development"
of the Constitution and give an "account of the development of the American
Constitution and of American Constitutionalism from its origins in England,
Europe, [sic] and the colonies to our time," little is said of sources in
continental Europe. At the same time, even the sources in England are
limited to the joint-stock companies and compacts without recognition that
these sources are not accidental and isolated but are part of a federal
tradition with roots in Switzerland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and
Britain. It is as though the major source of American federalism was the
commercial practices of early settlers.
Gordon Wood is even more explicit on the issue of newness. "The
approach of many historians to the American Revolution, it seemed, had
too often been deeply ahistorical," but this means for Wood that "there had
been too little sense of die irretrievability and differentness of die eighteenth-
century world." He himself seems ahistorical by not inquiring very far into

"New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 5th ed., 1976.

"New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1972.
"Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993.
Federalism: The Lost Tradition? 11

the sources of the differences. "The Americans of the Revolutionary

generation had constructed not simply new forms of government, but an
entirely new conception of politics . . . . By the 1780's the way was prepared
... for a new political dieory."22 His opening chapter on "The Whig Science
of Politics,"23 by referring only to England, seems, on the one hand,
inadequate to explain the sources of what was taking place in the colonies
and, on the other hand, denies its newness by rooting it in English tradition.
Wood fails to explain the strong federal convictions underlying
developments in the Revolutionary period nor does he recognize that what
emerged in the Constitution was not a "new" politics but rather a distinctive

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form of the long federal tradition, influenced by Whig politics in England,
which was itself heir to the Cromwellian Commonwealth and the Reformed
federal tradition in Scotland and England.
For Samuel Beer, there is a triple newness in his rediscovery of American
federalism. First, American federalism is a new political form. Second, it is
a political form, the meaning of which needs to be newly discovered. Third,
its unknown background needs to be discovered anew. Beer, along with
the other authors discussed here, assumes that American federalism is a
new political form, though not without historical background. The meaning
of this new political form needs new interpretation. Beer's considerable
insight into the nature of American federalism as exhibited in the
Constitution and the political system based upon it is the strength of the
book. When it comes to the origins of American federalism, it becomes
clear that, for Beer, the federal tradition was a lost tradition which he has
now rediscovered.
After coming to an interest in federalism in the 1960s in the latter part
of a career in political science devoted mainly to "political theory and
comparative government, especially the government and politics of Great
Britain," he interprets federalism as descending "largely from the failed
[sic] democratic revolution of the seventeenth century, the
Commonwealth."24 He sees federalism as "shaped by the Western world's
rejection of and escape from the Middle Ages" and "the source of this break
from the Western tradition . . . not in the Renaissance but in the
Reformation."25 It seems strange, as even he admits, that the first chapter
of his historical section is then devoted to Thomas Aquinas, followed by
chapters on John Milton and James Harrington.26 In these chapters and
what follows, Beer exhibits little acquaintance with the scholarly literature
describing the sources and development of federalism. Stranger still, there
22
Wood, viii-x.
M
pp. 3-45
"Beer, vii-ix
25
Ibid., xiv-xv.
26
Ibid., 27-132. Part One: From Hierarchy to Republicanism. 1. The Rule of the Wise and the Holy:
Thomas Aquinas. 2. The Idea of the National Republic: John Milton. 3. A Constitution for the National
Republic: James Harrington.
12 Publius/Spring 2001

is no evidence that he attempted to discover whether such sources existed.

The impact of the recovery of the notion in the Bible of the covenant
between God and humanity and among humans is not explored as a major
source of political federalism. A reading of Elazar's work alone would have
given him access to the extensive literature and provided a comprehensive
understanding of the development of federalism as well as illumining issues
that Beer discusses with reference to the writing and meaning of the federal
Constitution.
CONCLUSION

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After reading and learning from the work of these and other scholars who
have devoted themselves to the constitutional era, I cannot escape the
conviction that their books would show greater depth of interpretation if
their perspective had been informed by knowledge of the federal tradition.
Without going into detail, several areas might have been improved if the
authors had not been victims of the loss of the federal tradition.
First, Beer's "rediscovery" of federalism would show more breadth and
be more accurate if he had discovered and made use of the published
information on the federal tradition. Charles Beard's brilliant exploration
of the economic interests of the Founding Fathers could have illustrated
the realistic understanding of human nature in federalism, rather than
appearing to be a crypto-Marxist bit of muckraking. Forrest McDonald
would have included a crucial element in his study of the intellectual origins
of the Constitution had he not belonged to an academic enclave for which
the federal tradition did not exist in any substantive way. Had Bernard
Bailyn and J.G. A. Pocock not been limited by their specialized attention to
what McDonald calls a fashion in historical interpretation, they might have
shown how the federal tradition gradually made room for differing
ideologies and eventually even made a virtue of societal plurality of religious,
political, and economic views. Louis Hartz might have learned from
awareness of the diverse elements in the federal tradition that the United
States is a federal republic rather than a liberal democracy; instead, he
reduces federalism to its Hobbesian right-wing variety. And so on.
Second, understanding of the federal tradition would make
contemporary interpreters of the U.S. Constitution more generally aware
of federalism as a social and political order based on multiple, interrelated
covenants, rather than being defined as the division of sovereignty between
state and national governments. Further, the covenants making up a federal
order are constantly in process of being renegotiated. Federalism thus is a
dynamic order, not one that is rigid and static, making it, as Madison said,
capable of meeting the changes that the ages will bring.
Third, the troublesome issue of sovereignty is better understood if traced
back through the federal tradition to Johannes Althusius, the first person
Federalism: The Lost Tradition? 13

to formulate and publish a federal political philosophy, the first edition of

which appeared in 1603. At that time, Althusius was a professor at the
Herborn Academy, founded in 1584 by John of Nassau-Orange to
commemorate the winning of Dutch freedom under the leadership of
William Orange and the founding of the United Provinces, the Dutch federal
republic. Herborn was also a center of federal theological and political
thought. Soon after his Politics was published, Althusius was called to be
Syndic of Emden, a post he held until his death in 1636.
Althusius directly opposed the then dominant understanding of sovereignty
held by Jean Bodin that the rights of sovereignty belong exclusively to the

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prince or supreme magistrate and that no view of sovereignty is possible that
does not vest it in a single central authority. He held instead that "the rights
of sovereignty" belong to "the realm, or to the commonwealth and people" in
a covenanted order, and that the "supreme magistrate is the steward,
administrator, and overseer of these rights" as granted by covenant. He can,
therefore, be deposed.27 This view of sovereignty comes to permeate the
communities with federal forms of government.
An example of this federal view in operation is reflected in John
Winthrop's "Speech to the General Court" in 1645.28 As a magistrate in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop was impeached by the lower house of
the General Court for having violated the basic covenant of the
commonwealth. He was acquitted and delivered an address that makes it
clear that the people in covenant have a right to remove him if he breaks
the covenant, but the people have a covenant to obey the magistrate if he
keeps the covenant. In the speech, he makes a distinction between natural
liberty, which is the corrupted liberty humans have by nature, and civil or
federal liberty, which is liberty within covenant.
Fourth, to understand both the distinctiveness of the U. S. Constitution
as well as its continuity with the past, acquaintance is needed with the strong
covenantal/federal tradition that permeates the colonial period and the
era of the formation of the United State Constitution of 1787. The members
of the convention were experienced in that tradition in the late colonial
period and during the Revolution when the states were organized under
the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation. They were all
federalists in that Age of Federalism but had differing opinions of the exact
form the federal order they were forming should take. The federalism of
the Constitution of 1787 was a new configuration within the long federal
tradition, which continues in varied forms today.
27
The Politics of Johannes Akhusius, translated and with an Introduction by Frederick S. Carney
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp.4-5. This discussion appears in the "Preface to the First Edition" (1603).
Althusius, a part of the federal stream of theology and politics within the Reformed tradition, was the first
person to formulate a federal political philosophy. See also, Thomas O. Hueglin, Early Modem Conceptsfar
a Late Modern World: AUhuius on Community and Federalism (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1999).
^Perry Miller, ed., The American Puritans: Their Poetry and Prose (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor
Books, 1956), pp. 89-93.
14 Publius/Spring 2001

In this perspective, the Anti-Federalists are not properly named. They

were federalists who opposed ratification of the Constitution and the
particular version of federalism it contained. The precise meaning of
American federalism was an issue then, has continued as an issue throughout
the history of the American federal republic, and remains an issue today.
The stability through change will forever be an enigma to those interpreters
for whom the federal tradition is a lost tradition.
Though lost for most scholars in both political thought and theology,
the problems its absence creates for mainline, specialized scholarship will
gradually require its full recovery. The process of recovery will be slow and

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probably in bits and pieces. As scholars become aware of the federal tradition
and begin to investigate it, many will think, "I am the discoverer of what has
been lost." After the recovery has come to permeate even the specialized
enclaves, people will forget that it was once lost. If anyone reminds them,
they will find it difficult to believe that anything so obvious as the federal
tradition was ever forgotten.
Let it be remembered that Daniel Elazar was a genuine pioneer and
leader in finding, researching, and publishing reliable and comprehensive
information about the historical development of federalism in political
theory and practice.