Ferling - A leap in the dark : the struggle to create the American republic

A LEAP IN THE DARK

ALSO BY JOHN FERLING

Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the
American Revolution

John Adams: A Life

Struggle for a Continent: The Wars of Early America

The First of Men: A Life of George Washington

A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America

The Loyalist Mind: Joseph Galloway and the American Revolution

The Struggle to Create the American Republic

John Ferling

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Copyright 2003 by John Ferling

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ferling, John E.
A leap in the dark: the struggle to create the American republic/
John Ferling.
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-19-515924-1
1. United StatesHistoryColonial period, ca. 1600-1775.
2. United StatesHistoryRevolution, 1775-1783.
3. United StatesHistory1783-1815. I. Title.
E195.F47 2003 973.3dc21
2003001212

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

To
Josh Raskob,
Paul Miller,
and
Michael Miller

17541763
Join, or Die

17631766
A Loss of Respect and Affection

17661770
To Crush the Spirit of the Colonies

1770 1774
The Cause of Boston Now Is the Cause of America

17751776
To Die Freemen Rather Than to Live Slaves

17761777
A Leap Into the Dark

17781782
This Wilderness of Darkness & Dangers

17831787
The Present Paroxysm of Our Affairs

17871789
So Much Unanimity and Good Will

17901793
Prosperous at Home, Respectable Abroad

17931796
A Colossus to the Antirepublican Party

17971799
A Game Where Principles Are the Stake

1799 1801
The Gigg Is Up

1801
An Age of Revolution and Reformation

While a college student, I read The Crisis of the Old Order, the first volume in Arthur M. Schlesingers history of the New Deal. Like most youngsters, I had thought that what occurred before my birth was ancient history and therefore unrelated to my world. Instead, I was amazed to discover in Schlesingers history that much of the politics of my time had roots extending back a couple of generations or more. As I began to study history with wonderful teachers and scholars such as William Painter, E. Bruce Thompson, Kurt Rosenbaum, and Elizabeth Cometti, I grew steadily more aware that the past is prologue to the future.

Somewhat like Professor Schlesinger, my objective with this book was to write a political history. I wanted to explore the age of the American Revolutionwhich I generously defined as spanning the years of 1750 to 1800in search for links that connected the political ideas of one generation to those of another. First, I wished to focus on the establishment of the American Union. To one degree or another, nearly everyone saw advantages to confederating, but all perceived dangers as well. This book, therefore, has sought to inquire into who desired a Union? What did they seek from a Union? What were they prepared to do to maintain a Union? Just as crucial to my inquiry, of course, was the shape of the national government that would exist when the Union came into being. What were the choices? What led one faction to seek a strong central government? What caused another to resist centralization? Who won the battle? Why? And in probing these matters, other questions came front and center. Did the politics of the American Revolution spring newly born after 1763 when the imperial government in London sought to implement a new colonial policy? Did the political struggles that preceded independence have roots in the long colonial past? How did the factional, and later party, battles that followed the War of Independence fit within this long transitional era? Did the parties in the 1790s, the Federalists and Republicans, have a lineage that stretched back to prerevolutionary America? How did the colonists hopes, dreams, and fears of independence fit into the politics of postwar America? How did the protracted war, and the changes that resulted from war and revolution, shape the politics of the Early Republic?

Furthermore, during much of my career I have been intrigued with problems of leadership, and especially with those who led, or sought to lead, during the era of the American Revolution. In recent years, that interest has prompted me to structure a couple of seminars around questions of leadership in the American Revolution and Early Republic, and my students and I have attempted to understand history and this age through biography. So, in this work, I have sought to explore the origin and shaping of political movements and to explain the role of leaders in creating and giving shape to those endeavors.

Another matter gave birth to this endeavor. Perhaps most historians who have written about the eighteenth century have stressed that the political practices of that time were quite unlike those of today. But in the course of my teaching and scholarly work, I have been struck by the profound similarities in the politics and political practices of then and now. Differences existed, of course, but I found it striking that while so much about life in that earlier time had a distinctly premodern ring, many of the politicians seem surprisingly modern. Some in public life appeared to be as opportunistic as todays most unabashedly opportunistic politicians. Ambition led cunning individuals down disingenuous paths. Parties and politicians sometimes shaded the truth in self-serving pronouncements. Some activists conspired to deceive the public. And politics could be just as nasty as it is today, as parties heaped abuse on adversaries and searched the behavior of their foes for evidence of scandal, whether sexual misconduct or economic malfeasance.

Finally, when I was in graduate school, it was all the rage to believe that ideas shaped political behavior, and my earliest writings, which focused on the behavior of the Loyalists in the American Revolution, stressed that outlook. Over the years I have become convinced that political behavior usually owes more to economic considerations and that most people customarily embrace ideas that tally with their personal interests, especially their pecuniary considerations. However, this is not to say that I regard ideas as unimportant. Ideas, in fact, may never have been more crucial than in the struggle to create the United States, for the passionate factional battles of that day were fought over the shape and fabric of the new nation. Indeed, following independence, the primal question that confronted political activists and an engaged public was just how revolutionary the break with the Anglo-American past would be. In most instances, the answer lay at the very heart of ones ideology.