I will not take up my time debating Kevin Carson, who is sufficiently self-refuting, except on this one point.* It is true that Adams—and Jefferson, also, in the Summary View—argued for a radical reinterpretation of the colonies’ relationship to the empire, as a league of sovereigns. And that tells us what, exactly, about the Constitution of 1787? Nothing whatsoever! Jefferson and Adams argued (unsuccessfully, and years before revolution or the Articles of Confederation), that the British Empire was a league of sovereignties, as an argument that would avoid the need for independence. That is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether the Constitution of 1787 creates a nation or a league of basically independent sovereignties.
But, while it is also technically irrelevant to the question at hand, it’s interesting to read this same John Adams’ understanding of the sovereign authority of the Continental Congress at about the same time that he was writing about Great Britain. Adams, in short, argued that the colonies were not joined in a league of sovereignties, but that the union of colonies was itself sovereign! That is, he pictured the relationship between the colonies in 1776 to be the opposite of his picture of Great Britain, and instead quite close to what the Constitution of 1787 actually did establish—i.e., a nation and not a league of sovereignties bound by a treaty. Here are his thoughts (as recorded by Jefferson):
John Adams advocated the voting in proportion to numbers [in the Continental Congress]. He said that we stand here as the representatives of the people [i.e., of the nation, and not representatives of the states]…. That the individuality of the colonies is a mere sound. Does the individuality of a colony increase it’s wealth or numbers. If it does, pay equally. If it does not add weight in the scale of the confederacy, it cannot add to their rights, nor weigh in argument. A. has £50. B. £500. C. £1000. in partnership. Is it just they should equally dispose of the monies of the partnership? It has been said we are independent individuals making a bargain together. The question is not what we are now, but what we ought to be when our bargain shall be made. The confederacy is to make us one individual only; it is to form us, like separate parcels of metal, into one common mass. We shall no longer retain our separate individuality, but become a single individual as to all questions submitted to the confederacy. Therefore all those reasons which prove the justice & expediency of equal representation in other assemblies, hold good here….
Thus even if Adams envisioned the British Empire as a league of sovereignties in 1774, he did not envision the American colonies as a league of sovereignties in 1776—much less did he envision the federal union as a league of sovereignties in 1787!
Update: For some reason, Carson has deleted his post from his own blog, but you can still see it at leftlibertarian.org if you scroll down. Here is what he wrote, in case he tries to delete it again:
In a series of posts on the Civil War and secession, Tim Sandefur attacks the paleocons and "neo-confederates" at Lew Rockwell.com and Mises.org, among other places, and makes an attempt at an argument against the legality of secession. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the paleos have sympathies for the South and its "peculiar institution," as such, over and above a simple defense of the right of secession as such. But my main concern here is with Sandefur's specific attack on Joseph Stromberg, in his first post: "Springtime for Jeff Davis and the Confed'racy."
Of course there are plenty of historical howlers in the others. For example, this from the third post:
The American Revolution was not an act of secession, but of revolution—hence the name. The distinction between revolution and secession is crucial. Revolution is the natural right to break the law and overthrow a government whenever a long train of abuses evinces a design to reduce the people under absolute despotism. Secession is the idea that a state has the legal authority unilaterally to leave the union. The leaders of 1776 never claimed their acts were legal; they said that they were choosing to break the law, and that their doing so was justified by a higher principle—namely, by the defense of the inalienable rights that belong to all individuals.
The "leaders of 1776" and the Declaration of Independence didn't spring fully grown from the brow of Zeus. Ever read John Adams' Novanglus? It was a legal brief, written in 1774, directed against the legal authority of Parliament to bind the colonies. It was essentially a recapitulation of Adams' brief on behalf of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1773, in an exchange of legal arguments between the two houses of the General Court and Governor Hutchinson. Adams' argument was that the power of the British crown in the several colonies derived, in each colony, from the fundamental law of that colony alone. For example, the sovereign allegiance of Massachusetts was not to the imperial crown of the British Empire, but to the natural person of King George III, whose authority as King-in-General-Court was defined under the fundamental laws and charter of Massachusetts. George III was king, not of the Empire, but of Great Britain, Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Plantation, Providence Plantation and Rhode Island, Connecticut, etc. Each colony was related to Great Britain, and any two colonies were related to each other, in the same way that England and Scotland were related to each other before the Act of Union. The British Empire, in other words, was a league of sovereigns, with the authority of the imperial center holding sway within the territory of each sovereign member entirely by its own consent. Sound familiar?
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