Centinel I, Part VI: Instruments of Despotism

During the various debates which took place among the assembled delegates to the Philadelphia Convention during the summer and fall of 1787 – out of which emerged the framework of the United States Constitution – there was perhaps one single political concept which did more to shape what was and was not spoken about than any other. It was not republicanism, interestingly enough, or civil liberties, or the separation of powers. Rather, it was the notion of monarchy. Having thrown off the authority of the British Crown but five years prior after eight years of bloody conflict, the delegates were in some sense paranoid, in another terrified, that in attempting to reform the nascent union of states into a centralized national government they might unintentionally reintroduce some element of monarchy into the framework of American life. Power, in consequence, was handled very carefully in the proposed constitution, particularly when it devolved upon the individual. Consider, to that end, the office of President. While in many respects the chief executive of the United States of America resembled a monarch in terms of the function it was intended to perform and the responsibilities it was entrusted with, a host of safeguards were simultaneously put in place for the purpose of restraining the American President from engaging in anything even resembling monarchical excess. These safeguards included, but were not limited to, a four year term in office, Senate approval of appointees and international treaties, a legislative override of the executive veto, and birth and age requirements as prerequisites for election. The combined result of these measures was that the President of the United States enjoyed a fairly narrow scope of independent action, could go no more than four years before returning to the people for approval or dismissal, and could select as advisors only those whom the legislative branch approved. The knowledge that George Washington would serve as the inaugural holder of this office served as an additional, informal precaution. Having proven himself over the course of the Revolutionary War and its immediate aftermath to be a man of humility, prudence, and self-sacrifice, it was confidently assumed that Washington’s calm, evenhanded presence atop the newly-empowered national government would ensure that no abuses took place over the formative years of the presidency, and that he would leave in his wake a set of worthy precedents which his successors would be loath to break.

Valuable as these provisions – and the paranoia of those who erected them – did ultimately prove, they were nevertheless confined to the realm of institutional power. The delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, though clearly very concerned about the manner in which authority was to be wielded under the system of government they had gathered to construct, appeared to give otherwise little thought to the manner in which authority would be wielded outside of – but still very much affecting – the formal structures of the state. A great deal of attention, for instance, had been paid to the form and function of the legislative branch while at the same time seemingly nothing was offered as a counter to the influence of wealth upon legislative elections. Just so, in spite of the careful attention focused upon the particular mechanism by which the American President was to be elected, little concern appeared to have been given to the possibility of factional manipulation of the relevant electors. In some cases, this may have come about as a result a necessary compromise between state and national prerogatives. The President, for example, was wholly a creature of the federal government, elected on a national basis rather than by the states or their representatives in Congress. But the manner by which the electors whose formal duty it was to select the President was left entirely to the states to determine, allowing for a high degree of regional variation in accordance with regional needs or desires.

It may also have been the case that the aforementioned delegates simply did not believe it was their responsibility – or that it was even possible – to identify and counter every social deficiency which might have affected the performance of the government they had designed. People would be swayed by money, driven by ambition, and cowed by fear under the auspices of even the best government ever created, and none of those selfsame delegates would surely have avowed that their proposed constitution embodied anything like perfection. Rather than attempt to create a framework of government that was somehow impervious to the worst aspects of humanity – which, again, would almost certainly have been impossible – the Framers may instead have honestly tried to focus those aspects in a socially constructive direction. If men were inevitably going to seek power and preferment, harness their achievement to public service. If local and national interests were always going to struggle for predominance, use that struggle to keep each party in check. It was, by and large, a very messy way to go about things, but one which would seemingly never lack for energy.   

There was another possibility, of course, though it was not one which the men involved would likely have been willing to admit. The United States Constitution may have lacked formal safeguards against the influence of non-institutional power because its architects were exactly those who possessed and wielded it. They were men of accomplishment, after all – lawyers, and doctors, and merchants, and bankers – possessed of wealth, connections, and influence, over and within the communities from which they hailed. Most of them had served in the Continental Army, and enjoyed the respect of their neighbors and the trust of their peers as a result. A number of them owned large plantations and numerous slaves, and at least two of them could fairly count themselves among the richest men in America. It followed accordingly that, in the event of the creation of a new national government whose core conceit was the widespread and frequent election of its officers, these men – these fifty-five luminaries, grandees, and notables – would be better equipped than the great majority of their countrymen to turn their abundant social and economic power into publically-sanctioned political power. They had been doing exactly that since the colonial era – they or their forefathers – serving generation after generation in legislatures or on councils, as sheriffs and justices. No doubt they took it as a given that they would continue in this manner within whatever expanded federal power structure they managed to erect.

This is not to say, of course, that the Framers were wholly self-interested in their collective approach to the United States Constitution and the government it described. By all accounts, these were men of conscience as well as attainment whose concern for the liberties of their fellow countrymen was conscious and genuine. Nevertheless, it may still have been their unconscious intention to leave unaddressed certain deficiencies in the framework of federal power which they in turn were well-placed to exploit. This unspoken relationship between institutional and non-institutional power, the text of Centinel I makes clear, was of particular concern to its author Samuel Bryan. Surveying the condition of United States at the time of his writing in the late 1780s, he noted with evident trepidation that,

The late revolution having effaced in a great measure all former habits, and the present institutions are so recent, that there exists not that great reluctance to innovation, so remarkable in old communities, and which accords with reason, for the most comprehensive mind cannot foresee the full operation of material changes on civil polity [.]

The American people, in short, appeared to Bryan as in a state of particular suggestibility. Having cast off centuries of tradition along with the authority of the British Crown, they were at that moment more receptive to a major alteration of their social and political habits than they ever had been and perhaps ever would be again. At the same time that this was potentially a moment of tremendous opportunity, however, it also presented to the American people an equally outsized danger.

            The problem, Bryan avowed, was that at the same time the American people had been made particularly amenable to a significant alteration in their political customs, they remained vulnerable to all the deficiencies inherent in human nature. They were, for example, ill-informed on certain subjects, and often unwilling to become informed due to disinterest, idleness, or arrogance. In the case of a topic like, “The science of government” this tendency was exacerbated by what Bryan described as the abstruseness of the subject. The mechanisms and philosophy of public administration were to most people so exceptionally obscure, he avowed, that, “Few are able to judge for themselves [.]” That this accordingly made some degree of assistance necessary, Bryan freely admitted, to the point of calling, “Those who are competent to the task of developing the principles of government […] to come forward, and thereby the better enable the people to make a proper judgment [.]” But to this encouragement, the author of Centinel I joined a healthy dose of caution. “Without assistance,” he continued,

The people are too apt to yield an implicit assent to the opinions of those characters, whose abilities are held in the highest esteem, and to those in whose integrity and patriotism they can confide; not considering that the love of domination is generally in proportion to talents, abilities, and superior acquirements; and that the men of the greatest purity of intention may be made instruments of despotism in the hands of the artful and designing.

The implicit distinction to which Bryan appeared to be calling the attention of his countrymen was between expert assistance and popular leadership. It was one thing to seek the aid of someone possessed of knowledge in a particular area. Not only was this a useful endeavor, he avowed, but in times of profound decision it was nothing short of essential. But experts are not the only people inclined to offer their guidance, and nor are they the only figures that the public tends to turn to.

Certain individuals, for reasons of popularity, affection, respect, or achievement will seem always to enjoy the attention, the loyalty, and the following of their fellow man. In matters of taste, they become trend setters. In matters of reason, they become de facto authorities. At times, their position may fairly be described as having been earned, through toil, or hardship, or service. But at others, they have simply managed to catch the fancy of their neighbors through some mixture of luck and presentation. Their importance, in short, stems from the fact that they take pains to appear important. In spite the gulf which would seem to separate their moral significance, however, the public does not always seem attentive to, or interested in, the difference between one and the other. Some people, it appears to be the ineffable truth, simply want to be led, and some people, it appears equally true and equally ineffable, simply want to lead. It was this fundamental maxim with which Samuel Bryan appeared to concern himself in the passage cited above. Sensible, at the very least, that a decision of great importance had been placed before them which was beyond their capabilities to make without assistance, Bryan was evidently anxious that certain of his countrymen would not adequately differentiate between informed advice and uninformed leadership. Those who were possessed of popularity in proportion to their talents, he avowed, should be viewed with the utmost suspicion, for ambition was so often the consequence of ability. Even when this was not the case – when purity of motive could be definitively established – caution was still called for. While he did not enjoin his countrymen to make it a cardinal rule in all their dealings, Bryan nonetheless advised that, “Men of the greatest purity of intention may be made instruments of despotism [.]” The possibility of cooption – the “may be” – was evidently enough to disqualify even the most outwardly selfless guidance that came from a popular source.

The rationale behind Bryan’s abiding distrust of the popular and the powerful, the relevant text of Centinel I went on to explain, once more seemed to stem from both the peculiar state of America society at that moment in time and certain persistent deficiencies readily observable in human nature. As to the former, he again made clear that recent events had rendered his fellow countrymen, “Unsettled in their sentiments,” and consequently, “Prepared to acceded to any extreme of government [.]” Precedents which had stood for centuries were but recently cast aside, and the general attitude of the public was decidedly in favor of change. At the same time, however, certain truths as to the nature of human society and the moral character of mankind remained fundamentally unaltered. “The wealthy and ambitious,” Bryan affirmed, “Who in every community think they have a right to lord it over their fellow creatures,” were yet a factor in the United States of America to be taken into account. Having observed the impressionable mood of their fellow citizens, these perennial cultivators of power had doubtless set themselves to formulating a plan by which the situation at hand would play out to their advantage. Thus did the author of Centinel I attribute the calls for reforming the existing union of states which ultimately led to the Philadelphia Convention to a plot on the part of unnamed but interested intriguers. “All the distresses and difficulties they experience,” he accordingly explained,

Proceeding from various causes, have been ascribed to the impotency of the present confederation, and thence they have been led to expect full relief from the adoption of the proposed system of government, and in the other event, immediately ruin and annihilation as a nation.

Thus the American people were led to believe that a reform of their national institutions was of paramount necessity. And having been convinced that the union of states was on the brink of collapse, they acceded to the schemes of exactly the class of men who stood to derive the greatest benefit from the centralization of federal power.

            While Bryan was certainly correct in his assessment that the United States under the Articles of Confederation was at no point realistically faced with “ruin and annihilation as a nation,” the economic recovery which followed the conclusion of armed hostilities with Great Britain in 1783 was in actual fact both slight and highly uneven. Imports of British goods rebounded to pre-war levels, trade was significantly expanded between the nascent American republic and such venerable mercantile partners as France, Portugal, and the Netherlands, and the Mid-Atlantic States in particular – i.e. New York and Pennsylvania – enjoyed a period of industrial expansion in part facilitated by access to former Loyalist property and capital. At the same time, however, taxes in some states were forced to exceed pre-war levels in order to meet the tremendous debt obligations taken on during the 1770s, paper currency was widely over-printed by state governments, leading to large-scale inflation, and foreign trade agreements remained few and far between as long as Congress proved itself incapable of enforcing its authority over the quarrelsome states. In consequence of these varied circumstances, while life could be said to have markedly improved for people in contemporary New York City, Philadelphia, or Richmond, rural areas continued to suffer from shortages of hard currency and credit, interstate trade was marred by high tariffs, and foreclosures upon private property became increasingly common. Rural Western Massachusetts even became the site of a grassroots insurrection when, over the course of the 1780s, farmers found themselves unable to pay the debts they owed to their merchant creditors and responded by seizing and shutting down the local courts. While this most definitely represented an isolated incident – and one which was settled relatively quickly in spite of government indecision – “Shays’ Rebellion,” as it became known, nonetheless embodies the straits to which some Americans really were reduced during the period that the Articles of Confederation were in force.

Centinel I, Part V: Separate, Distinct, and Independent

            The states of Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina all grappled in the 1770s and 1780s with attempts by some portion of their inhabitants to declare their political separation based primarily on physical distance from the seat of government and accompanying feelings of neglect. The Bay State, for its part, had administered what is now Maine since 1692, first as York County, and then as Lincoln and Cumberland counties. Being a sparsely populated territory regularly contested between its native inhabitants and a relatively small number of French and British settlers, it had remained either ungoverned or loosely governed for most of its history until its final allocation at the aforementioned date. In spite of being physically separated from Massachusetts by the state of New Hampshire, however, Maine continued to be treated as an integral division of former throughout the course of the American Revolution, the ratification of the Massachusetts Constitution, and the first years of American independence. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1820 that Maine was granted full and equal statehood, and this only as part of a “package deal” intended to balance the number of slave and free states in the union that included the simultaneous admission of Missouri. The inhabitants of Maine had in the meantime been agitating since at least 1785 for independence from Massachusetts, holding a number of conventions and staging a number of votes to that effect between 1792 and 1819.

            In contrast to this rather uneventful history, the dealings of Virginia and Pennsylvania with their respective – and, at times, shared – separatist populations were a fair bit more turbulent. In what is now the state of Kentucky, for example, while migration into the territory was initially promoted by Virginia’s colonial government in defiance of British injunctions against settlement west of the Appalachians, the inhabitants thereof soon enough made themselves a perpetual nuisance to authorities in Richmond. Not only, these westerners began to complain near as soon as the Revolutionary War was concluded, was travelling from their homes to the state capital a lengthy and potentially hazardous proposition – covering some five hundred miles across mountains that were wholly impassable for a significant portion of the year – but the continued presence of aggressively antagonistic native tribes in the region – the Shawnee and Cherokee in particular – left the few permanent settlements in a particularly vulnerable position. Since only the governor could authorize the use of the state militia, and since the governor continued to reside in distant Richmond, the inhabitants of Virginia’s three westernmost counties accordingly concluded that their fate as a community lay either in self-government or imminent destruction.

Economic necessity seemed also to point to this same critical choice. When Spain closed the port city of New Orleans to American commerce in 1784, the ability of Virginia’s trans-Appalachian farmers to easily export their produce via the Mississippi River was effectively crippled. While the resulting negotiations between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain ultimately came to nothing – the Jay-Gardoqui Treaty (1786) was rejected in Congress once it became clear that the American ambassador had willingly traded away access to the Mississippi for admission into Spain’s various Caribbean ports – the precariousness of the Kentucky counties’ prospects were nonetheless made exceptionally clear. Had the aforementioned treaty been accepted, the inhabitants of far western Virginia would have been forced to essentially sacrifice their livelihoods in favor of America’s eastern mercantile interests without ever having been able to make a public case to the contrary on the same footing as the other states. As merely a small, distant, and sparsely-populated district of large, wealthy, and increasingly eastern-looking Virginia, their voices were easily drowned out by those of the political elites in Richmond. As a separate state, however, the Kentuckians might at least have been afforded – along with the ability to direct their own militia and enjoy the benefits of having a government near at hand – the dignity of being heard by their fellow Americans with the same degree of consideration afforded to Pennsylvanians, Georgians, and New Yorkers. Consequent to these and other considerations, nearly a dozen separate conventions were held in Kentucky between 1784 and 1788 for the purpose of drafting a constitution and petitioning for admission to the union of states. Notwithstanding a notable attempt by notorious intriguer Gen. James Wilkinson (1757-1825) to propose secession from Virginia and alliance with Spain at one of these gatherings, the Kentuckians proceeded with a degree of calm determination that ultimately paid off in the form of Virginia’s consent to statehood in 1788 and the Bluegrass State’s admission to the Union in 1792.

Less fortunate than the inhabitants of what would eventually become Kentucky – though similarly implacable – were the residents of a region in the Trans-Appalachian West on the south bank of the Ohio River between Pittsburgh and the eastern terminus of the Cumberland. Formal survey efforts, which would likely have averted the resulting boundary dispute between the colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania, had been abandoned in 1767, leading both governments to claim the right to administer Pittsburgh and environs as either the District of West Augusta or Westmoreland County, respectively. In spite of the intensity of interest both colonies seemed to be focusing on the territory in question, however, the inhabitants thereof were of the shared opinion that neither government was particularly interested in either hearing or addressing their concerns. Inspired by the actions then being undertaken across the colonies in the name of liberty and self-government, the residents of the disputed region accordingly petitioned the Continental Congress in the summer of 1776 – in the form of a document entitled, “The Memorial of the Inhabitants of the Country, West of the Allegheny Mountains” – for formal recognition as an independent state. The people of this distant territory, it seemed, were of the opinion that the ongoing dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania would likely result in an armed conflict between the two, that neither government was doing enough to control the activities of land speculators, and that the tendency of these same private agents to sell land belonging to local native tribes was bound to produce, "A bloody, ruinous & destructive War with the Indians [.]" They consequently requested of Congress that, “The Said Country be constituted declared & acknowledged a separate, distinct, and independent Province & Government by the Title and under the name of — ‘the Province & Government of Westsylvania’[.]”

In light of how many states were then embroiled in similar disputes over western land claims – as well as the power and prestige possessed by Virginia and Pennsylvania – it should perhaps come as no surprise that this entreaty was not acted upon by the Continental Congress. And while the subsequent settlement of the Virginia-Pennsylvania border in 1780 would seem to have laid the issue at hand conclusively to rest, the self-declared Westsylvanians proved themselves rather difficult to satisfy. Though war between Virginia and Pennsylvania was now a decidedly remote possibility, most of the grievances which had animated the Westsylvania movement remained unaddressed. The region was still quite distant from either Richmond or Philadelphia, still relied on the authorities headquartered in those cities for the deployment of the local militia, and was still exposed to the periodic depredations of the territory’s hostile native tribes. These complaints were joined in Western Pennsylvania by a sense of discontentment arising from the seemingly arbitrary assignment of Pittsburgh and its hinterland to the authority of Philadelphia. Many of the settlers in that region had migrated from Virginia, doubtless hoped that their homesteads would eventually be assigned to that state upon a settlement of the boundary dispute, and were consequently shocked and angered to discover that they had suddenly – and without being consulted – become citizens of Pennsylvania. Agitation for Westsylvania statehood accordingly continued into the early 1780s, at which point the combined efforts of various Pennsylvania state authorities began to erode the movement’s grassroots support. Perhaps the most notable of these initiatives was adopted at the behest of one Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816), a Scottish-born lawyer, Princeton graduate, and early community activist and publisher in Pittsburgh. Eager to finally and completely secure his state’s far western frontier, Brackenridge convinced the state assembly to declare that organizing for the purpose of establishing a separate state was legally equivalent to treason, thus making support for the creation of Westsylvania punishable by death. The movement for separation flared out soon afterward, though the rebellious spirit of Pennsylvania’s western inhabitants would remain a significant factor in local and national politics into the early 1790s.

While ultimately no more successful than the movements which gave birth to the states of Maine and Kentucky, the campaign of frontier activism which at length resulted in the creation of Tennessee from contemporary North Carolina’s westernmost districts was a fair bit more complex. The first Anglo-European settlers of the region in question – to the west of the Blue Ridge Mountains and extending as far as the Mississippi River – were in fact initially from Virginia and South Carolina, both colonies having easier access to the region than North Carolina. This did not in itself necessarily portend the region’s eventual rejection of North Carolinian authority, however.  Rather, it was a series of events taking place in the early 1770s that seemed to set in motion the eventual existence of a separate, sovereign state of Tennessee. First, the conclusion of the so-called “War of the Regulation” in 1771 – a kind of grassroots class rebellion which pitted cash-strapped planters against wealthy merchants, lawyers, and colonial officials – led a number of former dissidents to migrate west of the Blue Ridge into territory whose provenance was at the time still largely uncertain. This influx of these radical-minded – though not necessarily rebellious – individuals into the region very probably contributed to the second major development in the pre-history of Tennessee, the creation of the self-described Watauga Association in 1772.

Fair warning, ladies and gentlemen, because this is where things get complicated.

Having crossed the line established by the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1763) as separating the legitimate claims of the colonies from the territory reserved for the exclusive use of the Crown’s various indigenous allies, the architects of the Watauga charter necessarily believed themselves to be beyond the authority of any government save that of Britain proper. Their settlement was accordingly facilitated by the signing of a lease directly with the local native peoples, the creation of a limited form of self-government, and the founding of what is now Elizabethtown, Tennessee on the banks of the Watauga River. This initial effort was further bolstered in 1775 when North Carolina judge and land speculator Richard Henderson (1734-1785) organized the purchase of some twenty million acres from an assembly of Cherokee at a place called Sycamore Shoals. Forming essentially a wide strip of land bordered by the Cumberland, Ohio, and Kentucky rivers and the southern portion of the Cumberland Mountains, the region in question was roughly half the size of Virginia’s neighboring district of Kentucky and represented a tremendous potential windfall for Henderson – in the form of land sales to settlers and other speculators – provided that his claim could be properly validated. While perhaps initially hoping to accomplish this end by applying to the Crown for a colonial charter, the evolution of the Anglo-American crisis over the course of that year doubtless convinced him to instead make his case to the Continental Congress.

Congress, as it happened, was as yet not inclined to indulge the ambitions of a solitary land speculator whose proposition to create an entirely new state in the Trans-Appalachian West threatened to inflame an existing territorial disagreement between two of its members. Henderson’s project – submitted under the name of Transylvania – was accordingly defeated, his land purchase invalidated by the interested states – i.e. Virginia and North Carolina – and the fate of the relevant settlers once more thrown into a kind of legal limbo. On one hand, the inhabitants of the original Watauga lease and the failed Transylvania purchase continued to successfully govern themselves without the need for guidance for validation from any higher authority. Upon the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, for example, the residents thereof took it upon themselves to re-found their community in 1776 as the self-proclaimed District of Washington. Despite falling outside the formal authority of any state, this ad-hoc polity proclaimed its allegiance to the Continental Congress, formed a Committee of Safety, and began to organize and train a local militia. In spite of the presence of mind and self-possession which these actions would seem to demonstrate, however, the settlers of this sparse and distant region also appeared to harbor a fairly clear understanding of the precariousness of their situation. Not only did they face the continued threat of attack and destruction by factions of the Cherokee dissatisfied with their presence, but the emergence of a state of war between the colonies and Britain proper introduced the further danger of invasion by Loyalist militias and the Crown’s various indigenous allies. Petitions were accordingly dispatched from the District to the governments of Virginia and North Carolina requesting the formal annexation of the otherwise stateless territory. While Virginia declined the offer, North Carolina – perhaps acting out of sympathy after the settlers managed to throw off a Cherokee invasion in July of 1776 – agreed to the proposition. Effective as of November, 1777, the Washington District thus became Washington County, NC.

Annexation did not spell the end of a local habit of autonomy, however. Washington County was still a great distance from the state capital in New Bern, and events moved too quickly on the frontier for formal validation to be sought for every decision local residents made. The Washington County militia, for example, dubbed the Overmountain Men because their region was “over the mountains” from the Atlantic colonies, acted in a broadly independent fashion for most of its existence, partnering with forces from Virginia and South Carolina as often as those from North Carolina in defense of the former Watauga settlements. The reputation of this fighting force was at length greatly burnished by its pivotal participation in the Battle of King’s Mountain in October of 1780, during which a force of some nine hundred patriot militia defeated a numerically superior deployment of Southern Loyalists near Blacksburg, South Carolina. Having mustered six hundred men at arms whilst being harried by British forces, and having led them to victory alongside smaller detachments from Virginia and North Carolina, men like Isaac Shelby (1750-1826) and John Sevier (1745-1815) in particular were heralded as great woodsmen heroes of the western frontier. At the same time as these erstwhile patriots were advancing the cause of the American Revolution, of course, they were also demonstrating the self-sufficiency and determination of the Overmountain communities. When peace finally arrived upon the signing and ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, it was accordingly to be expected that such a clear display of functional autonomy would end up fueling renewed calls for formal separation and statehood. All that was wanting was the proper set of circumstances. As luck would have it, they arrived within the year.

 North Carolina, like most of its sister-states, emerged from the Revolutionary War deeply in debt. At something of a loss as to how best to pay off its obligations, the state assembly consequently agreed in April of 1784 to cede twenty-nine million acres of land – the whole of the its territory and claims lying between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, including Washington County – to the Continental Congress in exchange for some portion of its debt being forgiven. As Congress lacked the means to take immediate possession of the region, however, it was agreed that up to two years could elapse before a formal transfer of sovereignty took place. Understandably, this state of affairs did not go over well in the Overmountain communities. In spite of the invaluable service they had rendered to the cause of American independence during the recent conflict with Britain, they were now effectively being abandoned by one government while another took up to two years to decide how best to make use of them. Not only did this once more place the defense of the scattered frontier settlements entirely in the hands of a small – if now quite experienced – local militia, but it also begged certain uncomfortable questions as to the priorities and intentions of Congress. If, as outwardly appeared to be the case, the national government was as desperate as the state governments to pay down its obligations, what was there to stop the assembled delegates from arranging to trade the North Carolina cession to Spain or France in return for their forgiveness of a wartime loan? Once more, it seemed, in spite of having clearly demonstrated their functional independence, the Wataugans – or Washingtonians, or Overmountaineers – were being shown that their destinies were not really theirs to determine.

This conclusion was arguably affirmed several months later when a new session of the North Carolina legislature decided to void the donation to Congress and reassert New Bern’s sovereignty over the Trans-Appalachian communities. Fed up, at long last, with being alternately traded and ignored, an assembly was called by the Overmountain settlers in August of 1784 for the purpose of declaring their separation from North Carolina. Delegates from four counties met in the town of Jonesborough, elected a legislature, drafted a constitution, and chose John Sevier as their governor. A delegation was dispatched to Congress the following spring with a petition in hand for the admission of “Frankland” as the fourteenth state in the union. In spite of receiving the support of seven of the existing thirteen states, however – and attempting to garner the support of one of the most popular and respected men in America by changing the name of their proposed state to “Franklin” – the petitioners fell short of the two-thirds majority required by the Articles of Confederation for the accession of a new state. Nevertheless undaunted, the supporters of the organized but unrecognized State of Franklin spent the next several years attempting to consolidate their status as a de-facto independent political entity. A new capital was declared at Greenville, a second constitution was drafted and ratified, courts were established, new counties drawn, and a series of treaties were sealed with the Cherokee which established Franklin’s claim to an extensive swath of territory stretching ever further to the west than had previously been the case.

Notwithstanding this burst of energy, the State of Franklin really never managed to make good on the promise that the best efforts of its supporters seemed to foretell. Having faced repeated rejections of its offer to forgive back taxes and potential charges of treason in exchange for recognition of its authority, the government of North Carolina proceeded in 1787 to send a detachment of the state militia across the Appalachians for the purpose of reaffirming its claim to the region. A loyalist government was thereafter established at Jonesborough in parallel to that which continued to be operated by the rebellious Franklinites. The jurisdiction of the North Carolina courts was reestablished, sheriffs were chosen from among the local residents who recognized New Bern’s mandate, and proceedings were initiated against the properties of a number of Franklin officials in an attempt to bring them to heel. One of these men, no less than the notional Governor himself, John Sevier, responded to the seizure of several of his slaves by marching on the site of their imprisonment with a force of over one hundred men during a snowstorm in February of 1788. The arrival of an opposing force of North Carolina militia resulted in a brief skirmish, during which several men were wounded and three were killed. Events proceeded from this point on in a somewhat desultory fashion. Sevier, increasingly at a loss for manpower and resources and still threatened by the remaining Cherokee who refused to recognize the treaties between their people and the State of Franklin, reached out to Spain for a loan and ongoing military assistance. North Carolina responded to this attempt at foreign intrigue by redoubling its efforts and having Sevier arrested in August of 1788. While a sympathetic sheriff agree to set him free before he faced trial, Sevier and the last of his supporters ultimately turned themselves in to North Carolina authorities – and acknowledged the authority of the North Carolina government – in February of 1789. Ironically enough, the Tar Heel State again ceded its Trans-Appalachian territory to Congress in 1790. This in turn led to the creation of the Southwest Territory, its later accession to the union as Tennessee, and Sevier’s election as its first governor in 1796.

Now, granting that the history of late 18^th century American state separatism detailed above is a lot to digest all at once, its relevance to the cited passage of Centinel I is hopefully fairly clear. Keen to point out the inability of a geographically extensive republic to adequately address the needs of communities located at significant distances from the center of power, Samuel Bryan accordingly observed that even within the nascent American republic, “The inhabitants in a number of larger states […] are loudly complaining of the inconveniences and disadvantages they are subjected to […] and that, to enjoy the comforts of local government, they are separating into smaller divisions.” As the stories of Maine, Kentucky, Westsylvania, and Franklin plainly demonstrate, this was very much the case. At times the results were very civil, and at others they were rather the opposite. But the principle at work behind all of them was the same. The more distant a people are from their government, the less likely said government is to be able to adequately address their concerns, and the less likely those people are to place their trust in said government. To that end, political power is best located as close to those it claims to act upon – and to whom the responsibility for oversight falls – as is physically possible. In the final analysis, this represents a very pragmatic mode of thought, and very a conservative one by the political standards of a subsequent age. But it is also distinctly American.

The United States, after all, was not founded upon the wholesale rejection of authority, but rather of authority which did not recognize certain basic individual rights. The physical distance between the Thirteen Colonies and Great Britain being a primary causal factor of the Anglo-American crisis, it would thus seem entirely reasonable to conclude that the revolutionaries believed that access to government was one of these rights. The aforementioned movements in Maine and in the Trans-Appalachian West would seem to affirm this characterization. Bryan’s claim, therefore, that republicanism ceased to function properly over extensive physical distances was arguably rooted in both European philosophical theory and American experiential fact. Montesquieu spoke to the principle, in essence, but Bryan’s fellow citizens could speak to the effect. And yet, in spite of the fact that by 1787 a number of states had yet to conclusively address the complaints – sometimes rising to the level of demands – being put forward by certain of their more remote communities, the American people were being asked to put in place a national government of such power and consolidation that whole states would likely become remote in turn.

The people of Maine, for instance, were still struggling with their distance from Boston while the proposed constitution threatened to remove them yet further from a government of even greater authority. And while Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina all continued to grapple with the effects of attempting to assert their authority across significant physical distances, their citizens were at the same time effectively being asked to visit this exact species of civil conflict upon whatever luckless populations found themselves removed from the eventual location of the newly-empowered federal government. What sense did this make? What manner of magic could possibly make enlarging an existing problem the solution to that problem? The nearest answer, put forward by one of the principle architects of the proposed constitution, was that an adequate division of responsibility, combined with the moderating influence of scale, would produce the requisite balance of stability and energy for an extensive American republic to function. The key, one James Madison (1751-1836) further elaborated in Federalist No. 10, was successfully striking that balance.

Certainly, the danger existed of creating a government too distant from the American people to reasonably address their needs, and too powerful to be adequately controlled if it began to act against their interests. At the same time, it was also possible that a government which was too weak or too decentralized would entirely fail to bind the union of states together, or to restrain the more radical impulses of certain factions within the states. The solution, No. 10 explained, was therefore essentially to split the difference. By a process of careful delegation, a situation wherein local interests became wholly subservient to national priorities could hopefully be avoided; “The great and aggregate interests being referred to the National, the local and particular to the State Legislatures.” At the same time, in terms of that selfsame national interest, the sheer scale of the American republic would theoretically ensure that elected representatives would have to speak to more than the narrowest parochial priorities in order to secure election, that compromise would become the soul of progress, and that any faction hoping to take control of the mechanisms of federal power would be forced to contend with a great diversity of views and a great multitude of officers to consider, oust, or co-opt. “Extend the sphere,” Madison thus explained, “And you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens [.]” In this way, in defiance of the injunctions of the aforementioned Montesquieu, the “extended republic” could be made to function, if indeed not to flourish.

Convincing though Madison most certainly made this sound, it nevertheless remained a matter of conjecture whether or not his theory had any basis in fact. No republic, save perhaps the exceptionally flawed and corrupt model embodied by Rome in years before it became an autocratic monarchy, had ever existed on the scale which the United States Constitution was proposing. Whatever case he made, therefore, and whatever concomitant arguments his cohorts put forward in the ratification conventions in the states, was strictly on the level of a hypothesis. “This is what I think will happen,” Madison may as well have said, or perhaps, “This is what I hope will happen.” Samuel Bryan, by comparison, seemed less inclined to ask his fellow countrymen to pin their fates upon something as ephemeral as hope. Rather than ask them to imagine what might happen if certain things came to pass – if the Constitution was adopted, if its various provisions worked as intended, if the various moving parts therein acted and reacted as it was predicted they would – he instead asked them to look around at what was already happening within the nascent United States. A number of communities were indeed, “Loudly complaining of the inconveniences and disadvantages they [were] subjected to [,]” and were either attempting to separate or had unilaterally declared their separation, “Into smaller divisions.” If this was the case – if this was the plainly observable truth – then under what circumstances did it make the slightest sense to engage in an even larger project of consolidation? As Samuel Bryan made clear in the text of Centinel I, caution was the answer, rather than ambition. The limits of republicanism were already being tested in the states every day, with results that ranged from tolerable, to disagreeable, to very nearly calamitous. The idea of stretching them further still, in the form of a massive, powerful, and complex national government, accordingly had all the makings of a complete and utter disaster.   

Centinel I, Part IV: So Great a Country

            The degree to which Samuel Bryan believed that simplicity was an absolutely essentially element of any government intended to remain apart from despotism, tyranny, and corruption – and the extent to which he was convinced that this need for simplicity was grounded upon a very practical course of reasoning – was made exceptionally clear in paragraphs seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen of Centinel I, all of which sought to address the evident inadequacy of the “extended republic” which the advocates of a more centralized national government tacitly endorsed. The issue at hand was essentially one of size. In addition to taking issue with certain aspects of the structure of government proposed by the United States Constitution, it seemed, Bryan was also highly suspicious of the scale of the undertaking and its effect upon the end result. How could any government, he seemed inclined to ask, intended to exert its authority over the United States of America in such granular areas as taxation, commerce, monetary policy, and criminal justice possibly do so in a manner that didn’t prejudice the needs of certain communities over those of others? Notwithstanding the immense diversity of interests which the various states collectively represented – from plantation agriculture, to mining, to industry, shipping, shipbuilding, and banking – the tremendous physical distances between America’s major population centers, state capitals, and the national capital – at that point, in October of 1787, New York City – presented a host of seemingly insurmountable logistical challenges which Bryan appeared unconvinced that the proposed constitution had adequately addressed. How, in attempting to make law for – and, perhaps more pressingly, lay taxes upon – an otherwise fairly loose agglomeration of communities whose daily lived experiences and practical concerns were not particularly alike, could any government forced to operate at often very significant distances from its constituents possibly create and implement policies that adequately served their needs?

            In attempting to answer this question, Bryan delved for perhaps the only time across the length of Centinel I into the realm of political theory. As it happened, the ability of a large swath of territory to be successfully governed as a republic had been discussed to significant effect by no less august a personage in the realm of Western philosophy than that estimable architect of the theory of separation of powers in government, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755). In his highly influential tract, The Spirit of the Laws (1748) – discussed here previously on more than one occasion – Montesquieu made specific mention, within the context of a larger discussion about the unique qualities of various kinds of governments, of what he believed to be the ideal relationship between the republican form of administration and the physical dimensions of the region to be administered. A stable republic on a large scale was essentially impossible, the great philosophe affirmed, because the mechanism upon which the republican model depends in order to function – i.e. the distillation and implementation of public opinion – worked best in conditions that favored a clear consensus of thought and action. “In a large republic,” he thereby asserted,

The public good is sacrificed to a thousand views; it is subordinate to exceptions; and depends on accidents. In a small one, the interest of the public is easier perceived, better understood, and more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have a less extent, and of course are less protected.

The phenomenon which Montesquieu had evidently observed was that it tends to be harder to form an actionable consensus as the number and diversity of opinions involved increases. A group of five people, for example, can almost certainly decide where they’re going to have lunch much more quickly and easily than a group of fifty, or five hundred, or five thousand. As this tendency applied to the business of republican government, it had evidently struck the author of The Spirit of the Laws that the greater the number of people directly involved in seeking out and pursuing the public good, the less likely it became that the public good would ever actually be served. Though Montesquieu did not provide a detailed explanation as to how and why this would be the case, a moment’s thought would seem to affirm the essential logic of his contention.

            Consider, to that end, the topic of trade. In a small republic whose economy is completely and uniformly dominated by agriculture, policy discussions would almost certainly be ruled by the underlying consensus that securing access to viable export markets for the produce of the nation must be among the first priorities of government. Doubtless there would be some objection to this among whatever urban artisans or manufacturers reside within the republic in question. Those seeking to establish a local market for their goods must needs oppose the freedom of trade – and the accompanying lack of economic protections – sought by their agriculturalist neighbors. But the overriding lack of economic diversity essentially guaranteed by the small size of the relevant polity would more or less ensure that such complaints never rise to the level of threatening the aforementioned political consensus. If that same republic were to grow, however, by steadily encompassing territories whose climate, natural resources, or geo-physical situation inclined them towards different kinds of industries than were theretofore possible under the flag of their newfound government, the result must inevitably be the splintering of public opinion and the breakdown of the accustomed consensus. Now possessed of a substantial mining sector, say, as well as an even larger manufacturing sector, it could no longer be taken as a given that the various individuals chosen to sit in the national assembly of the republic could and would arrive at a speedy and effective definition of the public good. With agriculture now possessing a much decreased economic significance, and mining and manufacturing competing for the position of rising industrial concern, compromise becomes essential for any progress to be made at all. While this is not in itself a crippling condition, the end result would almost certainly be as Montesquieu described it. The public good, once quite narrowly defined and easily implemented, becomes “subordinate to exceptions,” takes on a vaguer and more generic character, and no longer serves to benefit quite as deeply as it once did.  

            Samuel Bryan’s description of essentially this same phenomenon in the aforementioned passages of Centinel I are what arguably attest to his familiarity with its terms. Indeed, he affirmed explicitly in paragraph seventeen that,

It is the opinion of the greatest writers, that a very extensive country cannot be governed on democratical principles, on any other plan, than a confederation of a number of smaller republics, possessing all the powers of internal government, but united in the management of their foreign and general affairs.

While this is not Montesquieu exactly, the influence of that earlier writer’s ideas upon the general contours of Bryan’s expressed opinion would seem clear enough. This becomes yet more obvious when one considers his further comment in paragraph nineteen of Centinel I that,

If one general government could be instituted and maintained on principles of freedom, it would not be so competent to attend to the various local concerns and wants, of every particular district, as well as the peculiar governments, who are nearer the scene, and possessed of superior means of information [.]

Granted, Bryan and Montesquieu did appear to come at the same issue from slightly different angles. Montesquieu believed that the inability of republican government to function adequately on a large scale stemmed from the difficulty that must ever arise from distilling many and diverse opinions into useful policy. The greater the number of views that must be taken into account, he asserted, the harder it becomes to locate and act on the public good. Bryan, by comparison, seemed to be concerned more with the physical ungainliness of a large republic than its tendency to govern in terms of poorly-defined generalities.

            Speaking specifically of the United States of America as it existed in 1787 – a union of thirteen states stretching some fifteen hundred miles north to south – Samuel Bryan avowed that whatever government could possibly administer the whole of its extensive territory without succumbing to despotism would inevitably struggle to do so in a particularly effective manner. “The various local concerns and wants, of every particular district” would surely be beyond the abilities of a general government to acknowledge, let alone attend to, rendering whatever directives said government ultimately attempted to pursue of limited use to the general population. Indeed, limited knowledge of the specific practices of diverse and distant regions might even produce policies which benefit the bare majority of the American people while harming a still sizable minority of the same. Local governments, Bryan asserted, “who are nearer the scene, and possessed of superior means of information” are preferable for exactly this reason. Capable of comprehending the needs and concerns of the communities under their auspices far more accurately than an authority located some distance away and burdened with a much wider scope of responsibility, such small, limited governments were likewise bound to be more attentive to the needs of their constituents and more adept at responding in an effective and timely manner.

            Notwithstanding this evident difference in focus, Bryan most definitely agreed with Montesquieu’s basic contention that the larger a republic grew physically, the less competent it became at serving the needs of its citizens. Granted, this was a broadly theoretical contention. As the examples put forward in the relevant passage of The Spirit of the Laws attest, there weren’t many historical examples of republican government on any scale to draw upon whilst arguing for or against the supposed benefits and flaws of that selfsame model. Montesquieu made explicit mention of one of them – that of the ancient Greek city-state republics – by way of affirming that the limited republic was uniquely possessed of political stability. “It was the spirit of the Greek republics [,]” he accordingly declared, “To be as contented with their territories, as with their laws […] All was lost upon the starting up of monarchy, a government whose spirit is more turned to increase and advancement.” Ambition, it seemed, was the great corrupting vice of republicanism, for it must ever have led to conquest, expansion, diffusion, and weakness. A small republic was strong, Montesquieu was keen to point out, because its government possessed the confidence of the greatest number of its inhabitants. And a large republic was weak because the confidence of its people became so difficult to define as to render government either ineffective or – more worryingly – a thing apart.

            The other primary example of historical republicanism which Montesquieu and Bryan alike could have drawn upon – but which neither The Spirit of the Laws or Centinel I did with much effect – would seem to speak to exactly this latter tendency. The Roman Republic, though for many Enlightenment thinkers a beacon of virtuous and balanced self-government, also rather paradoxically stands as one of the foremost examples of how susceptible republicanism can be to political corruption and institutional atrophy. Notwithstanding the exceptionally rigorous limitations placed upon the various political officials who served Rome – term limits, frequent elections, age qualifications, etc. – the profusion of assemblies responsible for various aspects of public administration, and the checks and balances put in place amongst the multifarious organs of government, the Roman Republic still eventually succumbed to its own worst aspects. Lust for territory led to expansion, which in turn brought about a diffusion of political authority, the empowerment of ambitious military figures, the erosion of political norms, and the triumph of demagoguery, populism, and tyranny. From a city-state interested in little more than protecting its own sovereignty and seeing to the needs of its inhabitants, Rome was transformed over the course of four centuries and innumerable wars into an extensive empire whose population, military, and government either tended to work at cross purposes or possessed very different priorities.

The application of this regrettable outcome to the circumstances of late 18^th century America would seem obvious enough. If one of the only reasonably successful republics ever to exist was eventually transformed into a despotic empire as a direct result of its tendency towards territorial expansion, perhaps it was wise to think very carefully about any project which seemed to have the same object in mind. The United States Constitution, of course, did not describe a polity which much resembled ancient Rome, institutionally or structurally. But the republic it did frame embraced a scale and centralization of authority that was to some extent imperial in nature, and this in itself entailed certain fundamental risks. While the United States of America certainly enjoyed the benefit of strong sub-national governments – in the form of the states – which could stand in opposition to the federal government if or when it appeared to exceed its stated mandate, the power possessed by the latter was still substantial, and the distance between the seat of national power and the “provinces” was at times quite large. Bearing this in mind, what was there to prevent the United States government from acting against the interests of a state – or states – located at the far edge of its nominal authority? Being responsible for such a vast and diverse swath of territory, why should this same government not simply ignore all but the most basic needs of the communities under its auspices? Montesquieu had predicted an answer in the negative – i.e. “The public good is sacrificed to a thousand views” – and even a cursory glance at the extant history of republican government would arguably have affirmed the wisdom of his case.    

But most of this was, again, theoretical, and perhaps too theoretical for the liking of Samuel Bryan. As the text of Centinel I seems otherwise to demonstrate, the son of George Bryan was possessed of an eminently pragmatic turn of mind. Whereas, for example, certain of his contemporaries claimed that smaller governments were preferable to larger ones because the former did not threaten so much as the latter to encroach upon the liberties of the individual, Bryan – without necessarily disagreeing with this contention – avowed that simple governments were preferable because people were more likely to adequately scrutinize something they could actually understand. Just so, the aforementioned argument which Bryan offered in Centinel I against the creation of a centralized national government in the United States of America was accompanied by a decidedly practical rationale. “Do we not already see,” he thus avowed,

That the inhabitants in a number of larger states, who are remote from the seat of government, are loudly complaining of the inconveniences and disadvantages they are subjected to on this account, and that, to enjoy the comforts of local government, they are separating into smaller divisions.

In addition to pointing to the lived experience of some portion of his fellow Americans for validation rather than to the sometimes abstract ruminations of European philosophy, this assertion on the part of Bryan also had the advantage of being quite easy to verify.

Centinel I, Part III: Perplexed and Divided, contd.

Given that Bryan spent the prime years of his early adulthood in Pennsylvania, it should come as little surprise that the vision of government which he described in Centinel I as being perfectly suited to, “Best secure the rights of the people” almost perfectly aligned with the framework described in his home state’s constitution. Not only did he believe a unicameral legislature to be the best means by which a given state might accomplish the creation and maintenance of law, but he also affirmed that frequent elections and strict limits upon repeated terms of public service constituted necessary safeguards against permanency in office and its associated sins. With the government of Pennsylvania as it existed in 1787 accordingly serving as a model, Bryan’s rationale would seem clear enough in practice. Having determined to seek redress for a grievance which they believe to have originated in the State House in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania petitioner might well have taken comfort in there being only four institutions with which to contend. If the issue at hand was indeed a matter for that state government rather than any county or municipal authority, the cause thereof  - or some form of remedy – could reasonably expect to be found in the General Assembly, the Executive Council, the Supreme Court, or the Council of Censors.

Notwithstanding the fact that the justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court were then appointed to seven year terms by the President and the Executive Council, each of these bodies existed wholly independent of the others in terms of their selection and responsibilities. Assemblymen, Councilors, and Censors were all popularly elected, and none of the powers which these officers possessed substantially overlapped with those of their colleagues in the other branches of government. Assemblymen, for instance, were never forced to contend with the Executive Council countermanding their efforts to make law for the people of Pennsylvania. Nor were the members of the Executive Council expected to submit the various appointments it was their duty to make to the scrutiny of the Assembly or the Censors. Even the justices of the Supreme Court, whose nominal independence was somewhat lessened by their being beholden for their offices to another branch of government, were kept from weighing in on political questions which would in other states have fallen under their purview. A case like Trevett v. Weeden (1786), in which the Supreme Court of Rhode Island invalidated an act of the legislature which it found to be in violation of the state constitution, would not have been possible in contemporary Pennsylvania, such responsibility having been explicitly allocated to the aforementioned Council of Censors.

Granted, this species of distinct administrative separation could not be expected to constitute a perpetual guarantee of integrity and justice on the part of the magistrates and institutions it acted upon. Ensuring that every citizen living under the auspices of a government could consistently identify the source of a given policy would surely have proven a rather hollow guarantee if the actors deemed responsible for the relevant error or oversight were not also faced with the prospect of replacement at the hands of those they had injured. Fortunately, the framers of Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution had foreseen the potential for such an egregious gap in the public accountability of the magistrates whose powers they had set themselves to describing. Their answer, accordingly, was a mixture of frequent elections and terms limits, the value of which Samuel Bryan later espoused in the cited text of Centinel I. A unicameral legislature forming the basis of his preferred form of republican government, he further explained that the members of this selfsame body should be, “Necessarily excluded by rotation from permanency [.]” By the terms of the aforementioned constitution of Pennsylvania, this kind of “rotation” had included Assemblymen, who were subject to yearly election and limited to serving no more than four years in every seven, members of the Executive Council, who were constrained to three year terms with a period of four years required to elapse before a possible reelection, and Censors, who were to be chosen at intervals of seven years.

The purpose of such measures, as Bryan affirmed, was to prevent any office holder from obtaining a permanent position – and gaining permanent access to power – within the relevant government. Corruption, naturally, was the principle enemy of this kind of initiative, patronage and its attendant vices – cronyism, fraud, inefficiency, etc. – ever gaining strength from the continued exercise of power by a single individual or party. There was also something to be said for the change in perspective that a frequent rotation of public officials was bound to produce. Elected continuously to the same position for a decade or more, any member of a given legislature might very easily – and unknowingly – begin to lose touch with the needs, desires, and concerns of their nominal constituents. Having lived for the better part of those ten years at some distance from the district they were chosen to represent, their life would in due time mold itself to the rhythms of the legislative cycle, with sessions, committee hearings, and votes gradually assuming a far greater importance than the country fetes and town meetings from which their public support was first drawn. While this kind of acute familiarity with the mechanics of legislation would doubtless render the official in question better able to navigate the often treacherous currents of popular government than someone possessed of less experience, it would likely also render them less capable of accurately speaking to and advocating for the specific interests of their district.

This would seem a particularly relevant consideration in the context of a region which suddenly finds itself undergoing rapid and/or drastic demographic or economic change. The magistrate in question might once have accurately represented the general character of the constituency from which they were elected. But the rapid acceleration of a given trend towards or away from this or that industry, resulting in a shift in the commercial status quo, an influx of economic migrants, or an inverse depopulation, could very easily lead to a significant alteration in the concerns of the relevant community and its residents. Having nevertheless managed to secure repeated reelections due to some combination of personal popularity, patronage, and institutional inertia, the incumbent legislator would very likely go on representing that selfsame community in spite of the fact that their knowledge of its needs was in the process of steadily fading to a state of uselessness. Mandatory term limits, though necessarily constraining the public from exercising absolute freedom of choice, would seem a very simple and very effective means of preventing this outcome from every taking place. Forced, by law, to cast aside their sitting representative after a set number of years in office, the residents of the various districts in question would be effectively prevented – and protected – from becoming locked into a choice which might in time prove a great detriment. Having chosen, once, a lawyer as their advocate, they would be made to substitute a merchant in their place, followed by a farmer, a retired military officer, a banker, or an artisan. Each of these individuals would bring a fresh perspective to bear on the legislative processes by which their community was bound, speak on behalf of some new and different profession, and generally ensure that no single party or interest was permitted to enjoy a monopoly on political power.

As presented to the various states in 1787, however, the United States Constitution was not designed to promote what would seem to be such an outwardly desirable outcome. Though said document did set any number of limitations upon how long a given officer of state would be able to serve before facing reelection, none of these same officials were made to simultaneously face permanent removal from office following the completion of a set interval of service. Senators enjoyed the most generous terms, facing election only once every six years, while the President was required to return to the people every four years, and Representatives every other year. Granting that this would seem to compare favorably enough to the cited conditions of the constitution of Pennsylvania – which mandated, after all, that Censors would stand for election once every seven years, Counselors every three year, and Assemblymen every single year – the aforementioned lack of accompanying terms limits would seem to severely lessen the effectiveness of these otherwise highly prudent regulations. Having lived under that selfsame state constitution for a decade – during which time he doubtless became accustomed to the notion that few, if any, public officials should be permitted to submit their names for reelection ad infinitum – Samuel Bryan would assuredly have viewed this particular quality of the proposed national constitution with abiding concern. If the residents of a given district, he would doubtless have been given to ask, were under no obligation to exchange their beloved, or influential, or well-connected representative for another, why should they not simply adopt the most straightforward – and potentially rewarding – path and elect the same person every time? If a President should manage, over the course of his initial years in office, to construct a coalition of parties and interests whose support could guarantee his perpetual reelection, what could possibly stop exactly that from taking place? His fellow citizens, Bryan had previously implied, being somewhat less attentive to matters of public administration than was perhaps strictly desirable, such outcomes undoubtedly appeared to him as being far from unlikely.

This seemed essentially to form one of the principal complaints with which Samuel Bryan sought to attack the United States Constitution in the text of Centinel I. People, he either implied or outright stated, could not necessarily be trusted to act in their own best interests within the context of popular government. They were, of course, possessed of certain unalienable rights which it was the duty of government to recognize and protect. But in addition to being sovereign in their persons, they were also possessed of necessarily limited faculties. Sometimes they were not as vigilant as they should have been in regards to the public institutions which most affected their lives. And often they made very significant political choices based on misapprehensions or on short-term thinking. No doubt Bryan would have encouraged his fellow citizens to correct these failings, engage more critically with the various forms of government they encountered in their daily lives, and cultivate the quality of individual virtue which a republic arguably required to function. But, in the meantime, there was no sense in punishing humans for being human, or pretending as though they were collectively more attentive than was actually the case. The cited critiques of the United States Constitution which Bryan put forward in the text of Centinel I, in addition to showing the effects of his upbringing in 1780s Pennsylvania, seemed to speak to this conviction quite strongly.

Among its various other qualities which he believed were less than ideal, Bryan appeared substantially convinced that the proposed national charter was both impractically complex and hopelessly optimistic. People being naturally prone to lose interest in that which is not immediately and easily explicable, he avowed that any government whose structure and purpose was not discernible at a glance was unlikely to operate under the degree of public scrutiny necessary to keep it from becoming dangerous. Just so, Bryan also observed that, unless explicitly prevented from doing so, the residents of a given constituency would very likely continue to elect the same magistrate time and again. Not only would this threaten to make corruption an accepted part of public life, but it would also serve to steadily reduce the quality of the relevant community’s representation. The answer, in regard to these challenges as in so many others he determined to tackle in the text of Centinel I, was simplicity itself. Make government as straightforward as possible, Bryan affirmed, and keep the rate of turnover high. In this way, not only would fewer people be given to shrug at the actions of their administrators for want of a clearer understanding of what they were doing and why, thus arguably preventing those same administrators from surreptitiously acting in their own interests rather than those of the general public. They would also be far more likely to enjoy the benefit of multiple and shifting perspectives in government, greater transparency, and perhaps even the chance to serve their communities themselves in the absence of an entrenched, patronage-dispensing political class. The proposed constitution could not do these things, was not structurally equipped to do them, and it was evidently for that reason – among others – that Samuel Bryan tended to oppose it.

Centinel I, Part II: Perplexed and Divided

            It likely cannot be said beyond a shadow of a doubt precisely what motivated Samuel Bryan in 1787 to set out his views upon the proposed federal constitution in a series of essays made available to the public. Why did he feel the need to put his words into print? To whom did he believe he was addressing himself? How did he rate his odds of success? For better or worse, these are not questions to which the historical record provides an answer. As to the nature of his concern, however – the quality possessed by the document in question which he believed represented a potential danger to American liberty – Bryan was good enough to provide a fairly forthright answer in the first paragraph of the first entry in what would become a series of publications under the penname of Centinel. With the intention of putting his fellow Pennsylvanians in mind of, “Certain liberties and privileges secured to you by the constitution of this commonwealth,” he accordingly affirmed that,

As yet you have the right to freedom of speech, and of publishing your sentiments. How long those rights will appertain to you, you yourselves are called upon to say, whether your houses shall continue to be your castles; whether your papers, your persons and your property, are to be held sacred and free from general warrants, you are now to determine.

Bryan, it seemed, was mortally concerned that the people of the Keystone State, in spite of successfully claiming and asserting their rights via the adoption of a republican constitution only eleven years prior in 1776, might already have begun to take those same rights for granted. Recognize what you are being asked to give up, he implored them, and do not act with undue haste. That he felt the citizens of Pennsylvania were being asked to give up anything at all naturally forms the crux of his perspective upon both the proposed constitution and political power more generally.

            Had Bryan restricted the treatise which followed to an exploration of the many dangers posed by a powerful, activist government – such as that described by the proposed constitution –  which lacked an accompanying declaration of rights, Centinel I might fairly have been described as making a very sensible – if rather uninteresting – case. Nearly every state constitution then in force contained an explicit enumeration of the various fundamental liberties possessed by the inhabitants of the same. Doubtless this was largely in recognition of the supreme legal and cultural importance attached to the Bill of Rights (1689) within the British libertarian tradition from which the supporters of the American Revolution derived so much. In light of the degree to which that same conflict – only recently settled – had arisen as a result of disagreements over the nature and validity of tradition, precedent, and “common sense,” explicitly codified rights were bound to become an exceptionally important aspect of whatever governments the victorious revolutionaries chose to erect. That the proposed federal constitution made no mention at all of what, if any, civil liberties the resulting government would be inclined to recognize was accordingly the cause of much alarm among a significant portion of the contemporary American public.

Combined with the proposed constitution’s paramount legal status, implied by the text of Article VI – “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof […] shall be the supreme Law of the Land” – it doubtless seemed as though there would be nothing to prevent the proposed national government from wholly disregarding both the natural rights presumed to be possessed by every citizen of the United States – life, liberty, property, etc. – as well as those explicitly guaranteed by the various state constitutions – freedom from unnecessary search and seizure, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, to name but a few. In light of the alarming vulnerability to which the ratification of the proposed constitution seemed prepared to expose the American people, many of the critics of that selfsame document accordingly took it upon themselves either to advocate for its defeat or to convince their fellow citizens to trade their affirmative vote only for the addition of a federal bill of rights. Many of the Anti-Federalist essays subsequently published during the ratification debate (September 28, 1787 – July 26, 1788) made exactly this case. The evident result was that demands for a federal enumeration of rights became the single-most significant hurdle pro-constitution forces were obliged to overcome at a number of the ratifying conventions held in the various states.

Though Samuel Bryan was most certainly also of the opinion that the absence of a declaration of rights within the proposed federal constitution represented a tremendous threat to the fundamental liberties of the American people, this did not form the core of his argument against ratification in Centinel I. Whereas the promise of a federal bill of rights did ultimately allay the concerns of enough delegates at key state conventions to secure the successful ratification of the proposed constitution, the nature of Bryan’s misgivings more or less ensured that they could not have been so easily dispelled. The issue which he took with the theoretical government in question – and which he expressed in the pages of Centinel I – was that it could not possibly have functioned as effectively as its supporters declared it would without eventually succumbing to corruption and despotism. It was not a matter of its simply lacking a few explicit guarantees. On the contrary, it was a question of structure and size, accessibility and oversight. As described in the text of the proposed constitution, Bryan asserted that the national government of the United States of America would be too large, too distant, too powerful, and too complex to perform the basic functions its framers had assigned to it while also respecting the rights and liberties of the people it was intended to serve.

Much of the rationale Bryan deployed to this end in the text of Centinel I could more or less be summed up by the axiom that the best form of government is that which is the easiest for the governed to understand. By Bryan’s reckoning, to “understand” a government would seem to have included both comprehending its function and being able to monitor the same. Speaking to the former, the ninth paragraph Centinel I avowed that,

The great body of the people never steadily attend to the operations of government, and for want of due information are liable to be imposed on-If you complicate the plan by various orders, the people will be perplexed and divided in their sentiments about the sources of abuses or misconduct, some will impute it to the senate, others to the house of representatives, and so on, that the interposition of the people may be rendered imperfect or perhaps wholly abortive.

While the outcome which Bryan appeared to seek certainly aligns with what we’ve since come to think of as small-government conservatism – i.e. public institutions that are rendered more efficient and transparent by being limited in size and power – his stated rationale was arguably much more cynical than that of the average latter-day conservative partisan. The modern advocates of de-regulation, fiscal responsibility, and low taxes tend to couch their priorities within an expressed belief in the ability of the individual to substantially govern themselves – in terms, say, of how they spend their money, make use of their property, or behave towards their neighbors. People, they thereby affirm, are perfectly capable of making sound decisions and living good, productive lives without government constraining their choices or re-distributing whatever wealth they possess. Notwithstanding the somewhat more proscriptive dogmas of social conservatism, this kind of thinking would seem to embody a fairly optimistic view of human nature, wherein it is held that the best qualities of every person should be given the proper space for expression by limiting government interference in their lives.

            Whatever else Samuel Bryan felt about his fellow Americans in terms of their moral or spiritual character, the passage cited above at the very least indicates that he harbored a somewhat less than charitable opinion of their collective intellectual acuity. Either that, or he thought them so prone to laziness that they would inevitably and consistently fail to make the necessary effort to understand how their government functioned if that government was overly complex. Unflattering as this might seem, the aforementioned text appears to be fairly unequivocal. “If you complicate the plan by various orders,” he avowed, “The people will be perplexed and divided in their sentiments about the source of abuses and misconduct [.]” To use an analogy, Bryan might as well have said that if you make a machine which you think is useful and which every person would benefit from possessing too difficult to understand, people will inevitably fail to learn how it works due to some combination of confusion and apathy and thus fail to benefit from whatever boons it has to offer. Upon reflection, this would seem to be almost exactly the kind of advice a veteran designer of appliances, public spaces, or automobiles would surely be given to impart to an up-and-coming apprentice. If there is a chance that people will become confused by something you have built, they might well say, you should count on that chance cropping up nine times out of ten. The solution is to make the things that people are going to interact with on a daily basis as simple and as intuitive as possible. Someone should know how something works just by looking at it, and should never be left scratching their head if that something happens to go wrong.

            It would be difficult to deny that this constitutes very sound advice. It most certainly does. It just isn’t the kind of counsel one tends to hear within the public realm of democratic government. Doubtless, as long as public opinion has been a factor in how a given state is administered there have been discussions in backrooms and smoky parlors about the credulity and the idleness of the common man, his inability to comprehend the great matters of state, and the need for sound guidance and decisive leadership in the highest echelons of power. But rarely do those who, in order to succeed, must sway the public to their point of view speak of such things in a open forum. That Samuel Bryan appeared to do so – in the form of the cited passage of Centinel I – would therefore seem a curious thing indeed. Granted, there were other principles which he felt inclined to uphold, and against which he seemed to think that the proposed constitution stood to act. Recall, to that end, the exhortation he rendered unto his countrymen in Pennsylvania that their continued ability to exercise freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the sovereignty of their persons and property had been placed entirely in their hands by the possibility of their agreeing to ratify the proposed federal charter. Clearly, he feared for this loss of fundamental liberties. It would, in consequence, seem reasonable to conclude that he did not oppose the adoption of the United States Constitution solely because he thought that the national government created as a result would be too complicated for most people to wrap their heads around. That being said, it was the latter justification he spend the better part of a paragraph explaining, and upon which seemed to hang the general thesis of Centinel I.

            The thrust of that thesis appeared to be, in essence, that the framework of government described by the proposed constitution simply wasn’t practical. There were certainly ideological roots to this conviction, not the least of which was Bryan’s avowed belief that what was at stake in America as 1787 turned to 1788 was nothing less than, “All the blessings of liberty and the dearest privileges of freemen [.]” But the general mode of expression in Centinel I – the means by which Bryan sought to justify his various criticisms of the United States Constitution – were of an almost uniformly pragmatic character. Consider, on that head, the description he offered of what an ideal government ought to look like. “Vest all the legislative power in one body of men,” he avowed,

Elected for a short period, and necessarily excluded by rotation from permanency, and guarded from precipitancy and surprise by delays imposed on its proceedings, you will create the most perfect responsibility for then, whenever the people feel a grievance they cannot mistake the authors, and will apply the remedy with certainty and effect, discarding them at the next election.

To his belief that people needed to freely comprehend the government under which their lived, Bryan thus joined the principle of day-to-day transparency and accountability. This would seem to constitute the other dimension of political understanding which he appeared so keen to promote. A government whose function is obvious, after all, and whose various mechanisms remain open to scrutiny not only promotes public trust and engagement. It also ensures that those responsible for error – or worse – cannot simply disappear into a byzantine network of bureaucrats, committees, and departments so as to avoid taking responsibility for their

The organizational framework described by the proposed constitution doubtless appeared specifically constructed to project just this kind of administrative smokescreen. Between a House of Representatives, a Senate, an independent executive branch, and all such offices as it would devolve upon any one of these bodies to fill by appointment, what hope might the average person have harbored of tracing the cause of a particularly injurious policy to its source, let alone of exercising the requisite oversight? A petitioner might make their case to a Representative, who might in turn point to a Senator, who then claims that responsibility lies with the executive branch, which might indicate, when prompted, that the blame should in truth be leveled at a given semi-independent department. And what was then to stop the head of that selfsame department, upon being questioned, from pointing to the legislative committee whose members authorized and funded the offending policy to begin with? Within a system of such manifest complexity, the various branches of which were purposefully intertwined as a means of creating a nominally stable balance of power, mere comprehension would seem to convey only a partial advantage. In order for the governed to truly be secure in the enjoyment of their liberties, they must be able to identify the author of a given measure with ease, entertain a reasonable expectation of that author taking receipt of their responsibility, and possess the means of replacing those who fail to take heed when their performance is thus called into question.