Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 | Page 2

and restrict the exercise and the
range of its power. The Federalists, on the other hand, held that want of
strength was the principal defect of the system, and were for adding
new buttresses to the Constitutional edifice. It is curious to remark that
neither party believed in the permanency of the Union. Then came into
use the mighty adjectives "constitutional" and
"unconstitutional,"--words of vast import, doing equally good service
to both parties in furnishing a word to express their opinion of the
measures they urged and of those they objected to. And then began to
be strained and frayed that much-abused piece of parchment which
Thomas Paine called the political Bible of the American people, and
foolishly thought indispensable to liberty in a representative
government. "Ask an American if a certain act be constitutional," says
Paine, "he pulls out his pocket volume, turns to page and verse, and
gives you a correct answer in a moment." Poor Mr. Paine! if you had

lived fifty years longer, you would have seen that paper constitutions,
like the paper money you despised so justly, depend upon honesty and
confidence for their value, and are at a sad discount in hard times of
fraud and corruption. Unprincipled men find means of evading the
written agreement upon their face by ingenious subterfuges or
downright repudiation. An arbitrary majority will construe the
partnership articles to suit their own interests, and stat pro constitutione
voluntas. It is true that the litera scripta remains, but the meaning is
found to vary with the interpreter.
In 1791, when the two parties were fairly formed and openly pitted
against each other, a new element of discord had entered into politics,
which added the bitterness of class-feeling to the usual animosity of
contention. Society in the Middle and Southern States had been
composed of a few wealthy and influential families, and of a much
more numerous lower class who followed the lead of the great men.
These lesser citizens had now determined to set up for themselves, and
had enlisted in the ranks of the Anti-Federalists, who soon assumed the
name and style of Democrats, an epithet first bestowed upon them in
derision, but joyfully adopted,--one of the happiest hits in political
nomenclature ever made. _In hoc verbo vinces:_ In that word lay
victory. If any one be tempted, in this age, to repeat the stupid question,
"What's in a name?" let him be answered,--Everything: place, power,
pelf, perhaps we may add peculation. "The Barons of Virginia," chiefs
of State-Rights, who at home had been in favor of a governor and a
senate for life, and had little to fear from any lower class in their own
neighborhood, saw how much was to be gained by "taking the people
into partnership," as Herodotus phrases it, and commenced that alliance
with the proletaries of the North which has proved so profitable to
Southern leaders. In New England, the land of industry, self-control,
and superior cultivation, (for the American Parnassus was then in
Connecticut, either in Hartford, or on Litchfield Hill,) there was,
comparatively speaking, no lower class. The Eastern men, whose
levelling spirit and equality of ranks had been so much disliked and
dreaded by the representatives from other Colonies in the
Ante-Revolutionary Congresses, had undergone little or no social
change by the war, and probably had at that period a more correct idea
of civil liberty and free government than any other people on the face

of the earth. General Charles Lee wrote to an English friend, that the
New-Englanders were the only Americans who really understood the
meaning of republicanism, and many years later De Tocqueville came
to nearly the same opinion:--_"C'est dans la Nouvelle Angleterre que se
sont combinées les deux ou trois idées principales, qui aujourd'hui
forment les bases de la théorie sociale des États-Unis."_ In this region
Federalism reigned supreme. The New-Englanders desired a strong,
honest, and intelligent government; they thought, with John Adams,
that "true equality is to do as you would be done by," and agreed with
Hamilton, that "a government in which every man may aspire to any
office was free enough for all purposes"; and judging from what they
saw at home, they looked upon Anti-Federalism not only as erroneous
in theory, but as disreputable in practice. "The name of Democrat,"
writes a fierce old gentleman to his son, "is despised; it is synonymous
with infamy." Out of New England a greater social change was going
forward. Already appeared that impatience of all restraint which is so
alarming a symptom of our times. Every rogue, "who felt the halter
draw," wanted to know if it was for tyranny like this that the Colonies
had rebelled. "Such a monster of a government has seldom or never
been known on earth. A blessed Revolution, a blessed