The Revolution and the Constitution: Models of What and for Whom?

Abstract

The United States won its independence by war, but without the social upheaval that today usually is associated with "revolution." If the documents of 1776 and 1787 are examined objectively, their value for revolutionary "models" is limited. The units of self-government in 1787 were ready-made, thanks to 150 years of loose and liberal imperial control. The struggle was defended in terms of a parallel: seventeenth-century "Commonwealth Men" against the Stuarts, using familiar English concepts. The emphasis on the separation of powers and the primacy of the legis lature had little to commend itself to the post-1945 republics, where power has been concentrated at the top—personal and charismatic. If "1787" was democracy at all, it was for men only, and then only if they were white and propertied. Nothing was planned either for imitation or for export. But images count in politics and history. Ideas are believed to be transferable and phrases quotable. Throughout the nine teenth century, the United States was seen as a model, however erroneously. Now there are other, cruder models for imitation. It is unlikely that any of these will produce the remarkable—because unique—liberal society that emerged in the United States in and after 1787.