AMERICAN REPUBLICANISM IN THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN LIBERALISM

Why investigate the first American state constitutions for their republican, liberal, and democratic content? Because, together with the Declaration of Independence, they most authentically document the irreversible American commitment to republicanism in 1776. We have no more authoritative statement of the initial American variant of republican government. After a decade of public claims to their rights within the British Empire and over a year after the beginning of armed resistance, the world was given notice by rebellious American colonial political leaders that the extant governments were no longer effective. Within little more than a decade these constitutions became the foundation for a further step of nation building: for the replacement of the Articles of Confederation by the Constitution of the United States, for the evolution from Staatenbund (federation of states) to Bundesstaat (federal state). The Federal Constitution of 1787-91 built on and fulfilled the goals of 1776 to the degree that Southern regional interests permitted. Many of the political institutions and procedures agreed on in the Federal Constitution were derived from or written in reaction to previous experiences with state constitutions.

Only after the successful establishment of a relatively powerful American state was republican, popular, or democratic government – all three terms were used at the time – perceived in Europe as a fundamental challenge to the dominant traditional combination of aristocracy and monarchy. As the German historian Leopold von Ranke explained in a fascinating series of private lectures he gave before the monarchical ruler of Bavaria after the failed revolutions of 1848: