Federalist 11
Having dealt with the disease of faction attendant to republican forms of government, Hamilton, in Federalist #11 returns to the issue of unity. Keep in mind that these essays were written in such a way that often one of the authors did not know what the other ones were writing and that, even though the essays were published serially, they weren’t written so as to follow a completely logical progression.
Still, it catches the reader’s attention that right after Madison argued that the republican experiment required the proliferation of factions in order to be successful, Hamilton decided that he needed to restate the importance of unity, and why such unity was even necessary. Our attention needs to focus on what he meant by unity and what its purposes were. By unity he meant greater political unity among the states, and as to purpose, he focused on two things: commerce and war.
Robert Nisbet in his book The Present Age commented that if the writers of the Constitution were to appear in 1985 they would be shocked by what had happened to their constitutional experiment. The sheer size and scope of government would unnerve even Hamilton. Nisbet attributed this stunning growth of government to one overriding factor: the omnipresence of war. The main thing leading to the centralization and swelling of the federal government has been its war-making power (Nisbet cheekily noted that it’s also the one thing government is not very good at). Not far behind in terms of a centralizing force would be government’s power to regulate commerce. Indeed, if any single clause in the Constitution can be held as singularly responsible for the growth of the administrative state, it is the commerce clause (Art. I, sec. 8), particularly given the Court’s capacious reading of that clause whereby the distinction between intra-state and inter-state is lost, as is the the difference between regulating commerce and commanding participation in it.
Hamilton began by observing that “the importance of the Union, in a commercial light, is one of those points about which there is least room to entertain a difference of opinion.” I suppose that’s true if the encouragement of a particular kind of commercial exchange is what you’re after, but that would be assuming that everyone agrees on the scale of such transactions and the medium of exchange. In our own day politicians have long offered up (economic) “growth” as the magic elixir that cures all ills, without asking whether all growth is healthy or whether there are attendant costs, including costs in social comity. For example, GDP measures all goods and services in an economy without distinguishing between beneficial ones and harmful ones. A growth in GDP is taken as self-evidently good, but could be spurred by much harmful activity. An oil spill, for example, may spur economic activity, but has negative long-term consequences. Put another way, "growth" doesn't distinguish between positive and negative externalities.
Hamilton correctly identified a distinctive American trait that, in his judgement, was already making European powers nervous, and that was American entrepreneurship. The historian Walter McDougall referred to Americans as “hustlers,” and he meant that in every sense of that term. The American displays a great deal of initiative and drive, a good deal of it dedicated to the improvement of material conditions, a condition Tocqueville bemoaned some forty years later. To achieve this, Americans will hustle, but they'll also hustle. Hamilton claimed that union provided the key to unlocking prosperity, clearly a central purpose of government. Only when we had a navy capable of protecting our trade interests would we experience “the enjoyment of privileges in the markets … from which our trade would derive the most substantial benefits.”
The expansion of economic activity and the build-up of the military go hand-in-hand. The increase in American trade, both among the states and internationally, would undoubtedly draw the jealous ire of world powers who would seek to “prevent our interference in their navigation” while they would also try to protect their position in international markets. More importantly, the European powers would recognize that our commercial strength would not only put us on a par with them in terms of global influence, but they’d fear — rightly, in Hamilton’s judgment — that we would soon surpass them, and thus they’d seek to clip “the wings by which we might soar to a dangerous greatness.”
In our discussion on Federalist 9 we already observed Hamilton’s ambition for greatness, both national and personal. Whether it’s possible to be both a great country and a good country remains one of the largely unexamined questions of our day, though not one undiscussed in Hamilton's. His concern was that an older mode of economic exchange — localized, modest, suspicious of luxury, and predicated on trust — would hold the fledgling nation back from its promise and potential, much like parents who won’t provide lessons for a prodigy. The Anti-federalists, he seemed to be saying, didn’t appreciate America’s latent powers and couldn’t be trusted to develop them. Hamilton’s effort to move America away from an agrarian society to a commercial one resulted from the fact that the Constitution's critics were “exclusively addicted to agriculture, and likely from local circumstances to remain so,” rather than taking up the mantle of becoming a “manufacturing nation” that would “enjoy the privileges” of globalism. And for Hamilton, this global shift would be all apple and no worm.
To be fair, Hamilton was addressing the persistent presence of European power on the North American continent, a concern that drove US foreign policy for a century plus. Keep in mind that one of Jefferson’s main accusations in The Declaration of Independence was that the king kept dragging the colonists unwillingly into European wars, to which we wanted to remain a neutral party. So long as those European powers — Britain, France, and Spain — kept jockeying for advantage with North America being part of their chessboard, American neutrality would be hard to maintain. From the inception of our Constitutional system neutrality was to be the spine of American foreign policy, and largely was until the 20th century when its policy became more “humanitarian,” and thus more intrusive in the affairs of others.
Then, too, the increase in American commercial activity would challenge the doctrine of neutrality because, in catching the attention of European powers, especially Britain, America might have to leverage its relationship with other European nations in order to keep Britain at bay. Only by having its own navy to protect its commercial interests, Hamilton argued, would America be able to maintain its neutral position. Not only would this “enable us to bargain with great advantage for commercial privileges,” but to be the deciding factor in the conflicts between the European powers. A navy, making us a nation to be reckoned with, would allow us “to incline the balance of European competitions in this part of the world as our interest may dictate,” and thus we could become “the arbiter of Europe in America.”
Thinking concerning international politics is crabbed by often facile distinctions between a “realist” and an “idealist” school. Writers on the topic will also discuss varying motivating factors, identifying nations as operating out of “humanitarian” or “national interests.” Allowing for the clumsiness of the categories, Hamilton outlines here a position more realist than idealist, and resulting more from national interest than humanitarian concerns. America, he believed, and in a way consistent with his view of human nature, needed to adopt a policy that accounted for the pernicious presence and interference of European powers into its affairs, and could only respond with strength. The confluence of commercial (and manufacturing) and military interests would pivot America away from the localist and agricultural economy that had long defined it — a nation of people satisfied to mind their own business — to one that would become a force to be reckoned with. WIth regard to this, the Anti-federalists often claimed that Hamilton exaggerated the threat of European power as a way of imposing a vision of national life contrary to established folkways.
But why? Perhaps part of the answer could be found in Hamilton’s reflection in Federalist 9 that the modest and restrained republic advocated for by the Anti-federalists would not satisfy the ambitions of those “bright talents” who thirst for glory. Indeed, Hamilton’s concluding hortatory in Federalist 11 bespeaks a more aggressive vision than a policy of neutrality; here, Hamilton gives voice to an ambitious agenda, to act not only in the interests of America but for all humanity, for “facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans. It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother, moderation.” America, he seems to be saying, has a special role to play in instructing the rest of the world in what the best polity looks like, and its pedagogical tool of choice would be its military.
Hamilton rightly divined that this path to American greatness would be blocked by the continued devolution of sovereignty to the states. Only by overcoming the “division” of state power and local identity could the requisite levels of “union” be achieved that alone would allow America to claim its rightful place. Only “under a vigorous national government” would “the natural strength and resources of the country, directed to a common interest” baffle all the “combinations of European jealousy” that seek “to restrain our growth.” An “active commerce” and “flourishing marine [navy]” are not simply a possibility to consider concerning which Americans must deliberate, but are the “offspring of moral and physical necessity.” Any argument to the contrary simply indicated “the little arts of the little politicians to control or vary the irresistible and unchangeable course of nature.” Here, too, Hamilton links the expansion of American power to a kind of historical fate, or Providence. As an educated man, Hamilton knew well the Greek insight that the rejection of fate was the essence of tragedy.
The “little politicians” on the Anti-federalist side were thus also on the wrong side of history, for by discounting the benefits of union they were preventing America from achieving its destiny. Union was the key not only to addressing the perceived weaknesses of the confederation, but to nudging history in the direction it wanted to go. Without it, we would be in a permanent state of “universal impotence” with no blue pill that would allow us “to prescribe the conditions of our political existence.” The tumescent union would emit “that unequaled spirit of enterprise, which signalizes the genius of the American merchants and navigators, and which is in itself an inexhaustible mine of national wealth.” Without greater union, that spirit of enterprise “would be stifled and lost, and poverty and disgrace would overspread a country which, with wisdom, might make herself the admiration and envy of the world.”
There could be no effective union without a strong military. A navy, Hamilton wrote, would “embrace the resources of all” by extracting resources from the various regions of the country. The south would contribute lumber, “tar, pitch, and turpentine,” the middle states iron “of better quality,” and the northern states hale and hearty seamen. The proper use of these regional resources could only be coordinated by a centralized government. Furthermore, a national government, Hamilton believed, would create greater stability in the resource economy, for if things went bad in one area it could reallocate resources from another, thus correcting for the vagaries of time and circumstance. A strong national government would compensate for the inconstancy of nature. “A unity of commercial, as well as political, interests, can only result from a unity of government.”
I mentioned Hamilton’s concluding hortatory, which is worth reproducing because it indicates something of Hamilton’s more expansive ambitions beyond simply improving commercial and political exchange among otherwise sovereign actors. The goal, again, is to make America a player on the world stage, and this means a supersession of European power. In his mind, only
Union will enable us to do it. Disunion will will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world!In contemporary America we will often talk about how disunited Americans are and how we are seeking a "more perfect union." In Federalist 10 Madison seems to warn us against such delusions. Is Hamilton then contradicting Madison? Not really, for Hamilton isn't talking here about unifying "the people" into a kind of like-mindedeness, but of unifying the states by shifting their power into the national government. When the Constitution speaks of a "more perfect union" it is not admonishing us as individuals to think more alike and get along better, but is requiring a shift in the principle of political sovereignty. Perhaps this is why Samuel Adams, when reviewing the Constitution, wrote that "as I enter the building, I stumble at the threshold."
Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
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