The Green Papers
The Green Papers
Commentary

WHY 'LIBERTARIANISM' ISNOT 'CONSERVATISM'
(Part Two)

by Richard E. Berg-Andersson
TheGreenPapers.com Staff
Wed 15 Feb 2012

[NOTE: This is a continuation of a series of Commentaries that began with Part One- Ed.]

The traditional (or, as I sometimes put it [with tongue in cheek- though only partially so!], "public school") American History is that National Politics in the United States of America began with the Presidential (and, more or less, associated Congressional) Elections of 1796 into 1797.

(By the way, I am not at all trying to suggest that public schools necessarily distort History any more than might private schools [although sometimes they do: for example, New York State public schools are required to teach that the confederacy known as the 'Five (later Six) Nations' of the Iroquois directly influenced the adoption of a Federal system of governance under the United States Constitution of 1787, even though there is not a shred of credible historical evidence to back up such a claim-- public schools in the Empire State, however, are funded, at least in part, by aid from its Legislature and the descendants of the Iroquois have such damn good lobbyists nowadays!]; I am, instead, more referring to the inherent simplicism attendant upon the way public- and, for that matter, private (whether religious or secular)- schools teach History [for I, too, well remember making little hatchets out of construction paper and/or oaktag back in grade school on Staten Island whilst anticipating Washington's Birthday on February 22d each year, despite the 'Cherry Tree "I cannot tell a lie" story' being but basest mythos!]-- unfortunately, for most of my fellow Americans, the local school [whether or not the pupil in question might go on to college or even beyond] is their only exposure to History- both American and World [which well explains both the 'Tea Party' and the 'Occupy' movements- along with their respective jeremiads (in different, yet still similar, forms) pining for a return to that which never ever really existed in the first place- of late!]. This is important to make note of, considering that most Americans' only formal study of their own History is that which they might receive through high school [whether they go on to college- and, perhaps, beyond- or not!])

The "creation myth" (for lack of a better term) of American Politics (and Political Parties) goes something like this: the Constitution of the United States of America emerged- pure as driven snow- out of the Philadelphia Convention, immaculately conceived as it was wholly untouched by base politics; George Washington, a man above politics to begin with (after all: he could not tell a lie! [;-)]), was unanimously elected first President of the United States for much the same reason a saint might be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church; only once Washington had decided not to seek a third term (thereby confirming his saintly station through his so willingly giving up power, power he himself did not even actually seek in the first place [unlike another military hero also born of Revolution- some dude with the first name Napoleon]) did those baser men thereafter vying for succession to his High Office- such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, as well as their chief political allies behind the scenes: Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, respectively (although all four of these be not so base as to be at all denied, by consensus, a place amongst the "Founding Fathers"-- along with Washington and Benjamin Franklin, making up "the Big Six"!)- so openly utilize, to their respective advantages or disadvantages- the evil of "faction" to create, in the course of electioneering in both 1796 and 1800, the first two great Parties of the quintessential "Two-Party System"- Adams' (and Hamilton's) "Federalists" and Jefferson's (and Madison's) "Republicans" (today referred to as 'old' Republicans or 'Democratic-Republicans' in order to distinguish these earlier 'Republicans' from today's Grand Old Party [which itself dates only from the mid-1850s]).

In reality, 1796 (and, indeed, this election year, in turn, did foreshadow the even more momentous election year of 1800) is an important date in the development of Politics and Political Parties in the United States as a whole, but only because of the coincidental confluence of events- as these were, at the time, perceived in the still brand new United States of America of that era- on both sides of the Atlantic, events that were themselves related to each of those two Revolutions- one American, the other French- about which I wrote within Part One of this series.

Simply put (and Truth be told): Party Politics did not first begin in America in regards to the determination of a (hopefully, at least somewhat worthy) successor to President Washington; instead, the battle over the Presidency post-Washington was simply a renewal of an already, and fairly well-established, partisanship within the constituent parts of the new United States!

I have often noted- in at least a few of my Commentaries for this website over the past dozen years or so now- that recognizable "factions"- where not even Parties per se- existed, on the State level, long before ink was first put on parchment to create the engrossed copy of the original text of the United States Constitution. The historian Jackson Turner Main- in his work Political Parties before the Constitution- examined roll calls on key votes (a methodology long before used to determine partisan and sub-partisan divisions in modern Congresses) in the assemblies of the several States starting immediately after Independence- and, thereby, discerned the very nucleus of the American Two-Party System; Main identified two major- albethey, at various times (as well as in different places), amorphous- political groupings all up and down the Eastern Seaboard that was the nascent United States of America, from New Hampshire down to Georgia: he labeled these two at least overarching political groupings "cosmopolitan" and "localist".

"Cosmopolitans" were based mostly in the port cities and consisted of merchants, lawyers and other what we today would call "professionals" who were outward looking and most concerned about the effect of the American Revolution and its aftermath on commerce and trade, overseas as well as between what were now claiming to be 13 separated republics- States very much "United" in name only and sorely wanting of some kind of central authority (given the inherent weaknesses of Confederation under the Articles thereof, especially once the common enemy of Britain was now longer directly hounding these States).

"Localists", however, were based primarily in the more rural and frontier portions of the so-called "upcountry", well away from the coast and, thereby, far more threatened by encounters with what the American Declaration of Independence itself openly referred to as the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions (surely a passage seen, nowadays, as sorely lacking in the nobility found in other more-often quoted passages of this important document [especially when one considers that, less than a century after it had been penned, Native American Indians out on the Great Plains would certainly have clear cause to call the American "kettle" 'black' (see, to take just one obvious example: 'the Washita, Battle of, 1868'-- the term "Battle" is here applied most loosely, by the way!: it should also be fairly noted that, but a century after Washita, many Native Americans themselves were- for example- serving in the United States Army and taking bullets for this country [and its ideals, as stated within the far more noble sections of the American Declaration] in a faraway place called Vietnam!)]).

"Cosmopolitans" were, already, 'Atlanticists'- not all that willing to severe at least their commercial ties with Europe simply because of a politicoeconomic "family squabble" (to which Americans were a party) with one of its Great Powers (after all: the American Declaration spoke only of "dissolv[ing] the political bands which have connected them with another" [emphasis, obviously, my own REB-A]); "Localists", on the other hand, were already looking to the West- eager to enter (and, yes, exploit) Indian lands that had hitherto been closed to them by the British 'Proclamation Lines' of the 1760s (one of their own major grievances fueling their support for the Patriot cause during the Revolution [and one also stated, most emphatically, in the American Declaration]). One is even sorely tempted to see direct lineal connections from each of these, through the very mists of History, to the "Yankees" and "Cowboys" (respectively) of the late Carl Oglesby's Yankee and Cowboy War (a work that has become a favorite among many a conspiracy theorist: though, yes, there is an apparent politicoeconomic delineation- within each of the two Major Parties in America- between those looking eastward and those looking westward from within the continental United States [but note, gentle reader, that I wrote "[o]ne is even sorely tempted": this does not mean that one has to at all yield to said temptation! ;-)])

In the same year Main published his work (1973), Alison Gilbert Olson brought forth Anglo-American Politics: 1660-1775 which suggested that at least political factions in America related to the political situation in England (colored by the 'classic' Tory vs. Whig division therein), this due to the manner and method of administration of the colonies, went back to even before the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and, indeed, possibly all the way back to the Stuart Restoration in 1660 (and, by the way, this very question has ever colored debate and discussion regarding pre-Federal Period National and Local Politics in America: faction or Party? In the former, temporary alliances centered around the issues of the day [with political figures switching from one side to the other without all that much difficulty]- but largely intended to aid in the gain and keeping of public office in a particular election or equivalent- would be the norm; in the latter, however, a more [at least semi-]permanent arrangement of political figures would be more prevalent, contesting a series of elections or equivalent: all too often, what is encountered in America before 1796 is something of a mix of the two!). Olson, of course, was unaware of Main's book (as he was of Olson's), so Main's terminology is not at all readily transferable one to the other, yet cross-currents and connections between what each work covers can, nonetheless, be discerned (that is: if one- if only for the sake of this specific exercise- reads Olson's work as being a reasonable "prequel" to Main's).

The year after Main's and Olson's books came out, historian H. James Henderson- in his Party Politics in the Continental Congress- utilized the same methodology as had Main (examination of key votes on roll call) to discern something, on an at least 'proto'-national level, much akin to that which Main had himself found at the State level (although Henderson also discerned [and this is not all that surprising considering the vastness of the territory- especially considering the limited communications and transportation technology of the era- covered by the 13 original British colonies-become-American States] sectional differences between States and regions of States already foreshadowing those same differences that would eventually lead to the American Civil War and its own long-term effect on American Politics thereafter: certainly the New England region was as homogenous in its own way as was the Southern in its own way; the Middle States were, thus, well-- caught in the middle! Indeed, Benjamin H. Newcomb, in 1995, published his Political Partisanship in the Middle Colonies, 1700-1776 in which he identified actual Parties- as opposed to factions [as defined in the preceding paragraph of this piece]- in the three colonies-soon to be States of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania [although, unlike Main, Newcomb did not see any of these as potential forerunners of true 'national' political parties: then again, Main had worked with data from the period following that covered by Newcomb (and, by the time covered by Main's study, at least one compelling 'national' interest- winning the War for American Independence- had already come to the fore)]. From Henderson's work, one can reason that Main's "cosmopolitans" and "localists" were themselves each subdivided by sectional concerns once their respective interests were- via the Confederation- extended beyond the borders of their respective States and regions: but the basic dichotomy between the "cosmopolitan" and "localist" per se remains telling).

Whatever "cosmopolitan" or "localist" elements- whether in the form of mere faction or more organized Party- existed within the original 13 prior to the American Revolution, these two major American political groupings of the era were both on, more or less, the same side once the War for American Independence had been joined: they were both, at the start, the "liberals" (in a sense, then, they were all men not all that much unlike Edmund Burke across 'the Pond'- but for the fact that Burke, ensconced in England, remained a loyal subject of King George III, serving in His Majesty's Parliament for another nearly two decades after the "embattled farmers" had "fired the shot heard 'round the world" at Lexington and Concord and the notion, on the part of these American "liberals", that the ancient regime they were taking on was that of King George III, declared to be a Tyrant [despite his status, back home in Britain, as a Constitutional Monarch] by themselves)- while the British Loyalists (who need not have applied when it came to being part of either State governance or the Continental Congress) were the "conservatives"- in this contest.

Yet, they each were already "jockeying for position" as regarded control of the American Revolution. In this light, one can almost read the American Declaration of Independence as a tripartite document (although note, dear reader, that I said "almost"!): the first part something of a proto-constitutional argument most "cosmopolitan" in its feeling, followed by the long list of grievances against King and Parliament (many, if not most, of them reflecting more "localist" concerns), before finally coming to the final paragraph in which "cosmopolitan" and "localist" alike put aside any and all differences in order to "pledge... lives, fortunes and... sacred honor" to the common quasi-'national' cause. We, of course, know that Thomas Jefferson's draft is the infrastructure of the Declaration, that 2 of the other 4 members of the committee appointed to come up with the document- John Adams and Benjamin Franklin- made minor changes before the Continental Congress as a whole tinkered with it a bit before it achieved the form in which we now can read it (thus it was not really the stuff of a "cosmopolitan"/"localist" political compromise) but might the need for such compromise have already been well anticipated by Jefferson, Adams and Franklin aforehand?

On the State level, there was- often as not- more political strife, as it were, between these two groupings during the war: much of this had quite a lot to do with whether or not the colony-become-State had been at all adversely affected by the 'Proclamation Line's (of 1763 and 1768, respectively)- those boundaries generally following the Appalachian chain to the west of which the white man was not to permanently settle (the British were purposely trying to maintain the region between the Appalachians and the Mississippi as 'Indian country': the granting of the Ohio Valley- portions of which were claimed by 4 States- to an expanded Province of Quebec [=Canada] in 1774 further exacerbated not only the tension between the colonies and the Mother Country but also tensions between "cosmopolitans" and "localists" in States so affected, even after the American Revolution was already underway!).

The States directly so affected by these Proclamation Lines had been New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia; New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland were totally unaffected (as they were untouched) by them; and- while the post-1787 territory of Massachusetts, Connecticut and South Carolina was not at all affected either, these three States were rather "in the middle", for they each were advancing western claims based on the grants of land in their respective colonial charters (meanwhile, Pennsylvania was not making any western claims beyond a claim to its having a western boundary 5 degrees of longitude west of a particular point in the Delaware River that formed its eastern border: though, in Pennsylvania's case, its western border would still be west of the Proclamation Lines, where not also adversely affected by the Quebec Act of 1774).

In those States far more so affected by the Proclamation Lines (and, perhaps, the Quebec Act also), "localists" developed a greater distrust of "cosmopolitan" intentions (especially as regarded the settling of the West, even well after an independent United States of America no longer had any legal compulsion whatsoever to honor the British Proclamations that had first imposed these restrictions)-- the much later 'Whisky Rebellion' in western Pennsylvania that President Washington faced during his second term seems, at least in this light, to have been but the continuation of an already well-established political pattern.

Any such political strife between "cosmopolitan" and "localist" at the State level was also at least somewhat determined by recent internal history: for example, "the Regulation" in North Carolina (in which persons from the hills and mountains of what is now northwestern North Carolina sought redress of grievances [with mixed success] from the colonial governor in a series of what became armed conflicts from 1768 to 1773, not all that long before the outbreak of the American Revolution-- the persons seeking such redress became known as 'Regulators' because they were demanding a "regulation" of what they saw as unfair and arbitrary taxation and collection procedures) was, most definitely, "localist" political action: as a result, the Regulation seems to have well colored political relationships between "cosmopolitan" and "localist" in North Carolina throughout the war and for some time thereafter (and, in this particular regard, it seems most interesting that- alone among the States that sent 'deputies' to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787- North Carolina [as Rhode Island did not even attend that august gathering] held out ratifying the new Federal Constitution itself until the American Bill of Rights- in the form of proposed Amendments to that document- had already been reported out, by the First Congress of the United States, to the States of the Union for ratification! A "localist" 'check' on "cosmopolitan" promise, perhaps?).

But, on the (if only quasi-)'national' level, cracks in "liberal" unity forged (however begrudgingly) in the crucible of the War for American Independence began to appear even before the war was over. The States least enamored of the Articles of Confederation (if only because the Articles did nothing immediately as regarded the disposition of western claims by those States making them) tended to be coastal, rather than inland- thus, generally more "cosmopolitan" than "localist": it is surely not completely an accident that the last three States to adhere to the Articles were New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland- in that order! That last holdout- meaning Maryland, in particular- with its important port cities of Baltimore and Annapolis, wasn't going to put the Confederation into operation until there was finally agreement that those States with western claims would give them up (thereby, paving the way for the creation of the Northwest Territory and, ultimately, new States for the United States). And this all took place before the siege of Yorktown leading to the surrender by Lord Cornwallis in October 1781 more or less secured American Independence!

And, once the war was actually won, "cosmopolitans" and "localists" found themselves even more often at odds and, many times, so in earnest: what had been a political contest over control of a Revolution being fought had now become a battle over the meaning and legacy- the very "soul"- of that Revolution!

Massachusetts is a rather good example of the political changes in this regard during the lifespan of the Continental (later, Confederation) Congress:

The Province of Massachusetts Bay was, after all, where the American Revolution began: its "Boston Tea Party" engendered the reaction, by the British Government which responded with the closing of the port of Boston and what the American Patriot cause termed the 'Intolerable Acts' including one which stripped the Province of much of its self-government (to which it had been accustomed since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and the Puritans began settling Shawmut peninsula around a century and a half earlier). "Cosmopolitan" Boston merchant and "localist" farmer of either Hampshire County in western Massachusetts or Cumberland County in what is now Maine were, alike, adversely affected by all this: the events leading to, and then flowing from, Lexington and Concord in April 1775 provided common cause to all "liberals" (in the sense of the term as noted in Part One of this series)- whether "cosmopolitan" or "localist"- in the Province and this unity prevailed even after the cannons captured at Fort Ticonderoga were mounted atop Dorchester Heights and the British evacuated Boston in March 1776- never, as things turned out, to return.

Massachusetts Bay (as it was still called at the time) was a State largely unaffected by the irritant (to "localists" in particular) that was the Proclamation Line: although it continued to claim lands well to its west, the real western barrier to settlement by Bay Staters was its boundary with New York State (which would've been an impediment, Proclamation Line or no). The manner in which Massachusetts Bay adopted the very State Constitution that would transform it into the 'Commonwealth of Massachusetts' in 1780 is altogether instructive-- I myself once wrote an outline of this process in an earlier Commentary (dated 15 July 2008) for this website from which I excerpt (in italics) below:

[A]s the news of the 10/15 May 1776 resolution... in the Continental Congress... advising the colonies who had not yet done so to now set up governments for themselves, where necessary, reached Boston in late May going on into June, the General Court [the legislature in Massachusetts which had, shortly after the British had evacuated Boston, already considered producing a new State Constitution] simply no longer felt that it had the authority to make a Constitution solely on its own [at least in part, because its own powers derived from a British instrument of colonial governance, the Charter of 1691]. Instead, then, it proposed that each county in Massachusetts...send one delegate to serve on a "Committee" to draw up a Constitution that would thereafter be presented to the Town Meetings in the several town(ship)s of the Province for discussion after which, should the discussion be reported back as mostly favorable (the members of the General Court were direct representatives of these town[ship]s), the General Court would approve the proposed Constitution. The General Court, as representatives of the People, would- as was already the case in most of its sister colonies/States- adopt the document in their name, but not without the same People passing at least some judgment on it first.

The town(ship)s themselves generally did not approve of this idea, however, so the General Court now tried a slightly different tack:

In the Spring of 1777, the General Court asked leave of the town(ship)s to be permitted to draft a Constitution on its own [through the simple device of this being an issue in the ensuing elections- at individual Town Meetings- for the town(ship)s' respective "deputies" to a new General Court]...

If the town(ship)s approved of this approach, the General Court would do just that- make a Constitution (it was assumed that if there were more duly elected "deputies" from the town(ship)s in the General Court opposed to this idea than not, the General Court would not at all so act in any event) and then submit the newly drafted document to the Town Meetings for approval (or, of course, potential disapproval) by the People...

for the first time, then, a written Constitution would be submitted to the People directly-- that is: a fundamental charter of government would not even be able to take effect until the People themselves had passed judgment on it and found it to their liking.

The majority of the General Court newly elected that Spring of '77 being "deputies" in favor of this approach, the legislators now (along with all their other duties-- for they were still also passing ordinary legislation involving all sorts of mundane political and legal issues) set out to draft a Constitution for what they were now calling "the State of Massachusetts Bay". In the end, it took them until February 1778 to complete their labors, after which they submitted their draft to the People... all the People!...

who, in that Spring of '78's Town Meetings, promptly rejected it!...Once again, the General Court was forced to take a new tack and they ended up taking what was to be an even newer tack, one that would change the methodology of Constitution-making profoundly (and, again, have so obvious an influence on the making of the Federal Constitution):

on 20 February 1779, the General Court passed a resolution asking the Town Meetings that Spring (as the "deputies" to the General Court would, again, be standing for annual election to that body in their respective town[ship]s) to answer two questions:

1. whether they, indeed, wanted a new Constitution in the first place; and
2. if so, would they then permit the General Court to call a separate Province-wide Convention for that express purpose.

So, for the first time, a body representing the People but completely independent of the legislature would draft a Constitution and submit it to the People (under the same terms as before, by the way- that is: including adult males without property who otherwise would not be entitled to vote for lack of real property in the process, as well as requiring a 2/3 vote of said People to so approve said document).

The answer coming back from the town(ship)s of Massachusetts Bay that Spring of '79 was heavily in the affirmative as regarded this new method and, therefore, come 17 June 1779, the General Court authorized the town(ship)s to hold Town Meetings in which delegates to a "State Convention" would be chosen, said Convention to assemble on the first Wednesday in September next. Accordingly, on 1 September 1779, the Constitutional Convention convened in Cambridge, recessed on 11 November and then reconvened in what is now the Old State House in Boston on 5 January 1780. Finally, on 2 March 1780, the new Constitution- consisting of two portions (as was the case in a few of the State Constitutions of the time, most notably Virginia's), a 'Declaration of Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' and 'The Frame of Government'- was published.

The Convention, thereby, placed the document before the Town Meetings, resolving to reconvene on the first Wednesday of June next in order to ascertain whether or not the document had, indeed, been approved by the necessary two-thirds of all the People. The Town Meetings considered the Declaration of Rights, the Preamble and the six "Chapters" and their divisions into Sections and then Articles (rather different from the "Article, Section, paragraph/clause" system more usual in Constitutions since) within the Frame of Government separately: thus, not all town(ship)s approved every one of these divisions (or even the same ones as a neighboring town[ship]!). Nonetheless, the Convention reconvened on 7 June 1780, spent a week going over the returns from the town(ship)s and came to the conclusion that each and every division of the document had received at least 2/3 of the vote (from somewhere!) in support of it and, thus, come 15 June 1780, the Convention was able to proclaim the new Constitution for the Commonwealth.

The point of my having repeated what I had written now more than three and a half years ago here is that the method and manner utilized in Massachusetts to draft, and then seek ratification (by the People) of, its State Constitution evinces no little agreement amongst the "cosmopolitan" and "localist" elements within- not only its legislature, the General Court itself- but also "out there" within the greater polity! Differences, doubtless, still existed (as I noted in what I have quoted from myself above, not all places within the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts approved of the same provisions within that Commonwealth's fundamental document and the provisions supported in one place were not necessary those supported elsewhere within the same State- or even the same County of that State!); but, yes, there was general consensus and Massachusetts' new fundamental document, in the end, became something either side could at least live with.

Note also, however, that Massachusetts had adopted its Constitution while the War for American Independence was still being fought (although Massachusetts could afford to go through the procedure outlined above precisely because, after March 1776, that war was no longer being fought at scale within its own borders). Once the war was over and (formally with the Peace of Paris of 1783) American Independence won, that consensus between "cosmopolitan" and "localist" began to break down- even in Massachusetts! (One must then think of Massachusetts having been able to so establish its own Constitution as something of the proverbial "near thing"-- for if the process itself had taken but a couple years longer...!)

The outward sign that the wartime consensus in Massachusetts itself was no longer wholly effective was, of course, that which came to be called Shays's Rebellion.

The background of- and details surrounding- Shays's Rebellion in 1786 are fully outlined in a Commentary of mine from 6 August 2008 (so I need not repeat that outline here!): suffice it to say that it- along with the contemporaneous Annapolis Convention- provided the impetus for the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 that would draft (and report out for ratification by Conventions of the People of the several States [thus, taking a page from the method of constitution-making already used in Massachusetts]) the Constitution of the United States itself.

The ensuing debate over ratification of the new Federal Constitution generally fell along "cosmopolitan" versus "localist" lines- "cosmopolitans" making up the bulk of supporters of the new fundamental document (therefore, these were become 'federalists'), while "localists" tended to be the 'antifederalists', opposed to ratification of the new Constitution. Neither side, however, took the ramifications of their respective positions all too lightly! Most "localists"/antifederalists were well aware of the failings of the Articles of Confederation and a clear need to rectify them (they simply were not all that happy with the method of so rectifying), while most "cosmopolitans"/federalists understood the reticence of their opponents.

Yes, there was plenty of incendiary rhetoric to be had- for there were ever "hotheads" overzealous for their particular cause and fearmongering by supporters of either side as regarded Ratification was not at all beneath either- but, in the end, "cosmopolitans" more held together in favor of a "more perfect Union" promised by the new Constitution than did "localists" opposed to it.

Still, any good map in an atlas of American History showing the geographical origin of votes by Ratification Convention delegates in each State clearly shows that the coast ('cosmopolitan" territory) tended to favor the Federal Constitution far more than did the upcountry ("localist" territory). Although- if only generally speaking- the antifederalist "localists" had lost while the federalist "cosmopolitans" had won (thus, the Constitution of the United States would be the "crown jewel" of the American Revolution's legacy), a new battle between these two political groupings was now to be joined-- one over just how this new "crown jewel" was to actually be applied.

And, as the forces in that political contest over the legacy and meaning of the Federal Constitution itself (a contest, or so one could fairly argue, that continues to this very day) were only just beginning to line themselves up as the First Congress under that new Constitution was completing its first (so-called "quorum") session in the Fall of 1789, came news, to these shores, of the very beginnings of another Revolution- this one on the other side of the Atlantic: a rather different Revolution (albeit originating out of similar yearnings for Liberty) from the one Americans had so recently experienced and one that- in time- would well stir up political animosities between "cosmopolitan" and "localist" in the new United States of America yet once again.

Find PART THREE of this series here

Modified .