Articles

 In the last issue of “Front and Center,” we introduced the two understandings of political order that comprise the general structure of American political history. The earlier political order, which may be called “Jeffersonian,” lasted from 1776 to 1861. The later political order, which may be called “Lincolnian,” was firmly in place in 1865 and…

In our American colonial period, the colonies were populated over time by people from various parts of England, from Scotland and Ireland, and there were people here from France, Spain, and elsewhere. For quite some time, however, the majority of the inhabitants of the colonies of British America were from Britain. Of course, there were…

There is a story one hears occasionally about Benjamin Franklin strolling along a street in Philadelphia after the convention of 1787 when a lady, concerned about the future of our country, asks Franklin what kind of government the delegates to the convention had given to Americans. Franklin’s reply to the lady was, we are told,…

On May 31, 1775, the citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina seceded from the British Empire. They did this through a series of five resolutions called the Mecklenburg Resolves that were published in the North Carolina Gazette in New Bern on June 16, 1775. (At the time, New Bern was the capital of North Carolina.)…

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union is the first constitution of the United States. When the colonies of British America secured their independence from Great Britain, each colony became a free, sovereign, and independent nation, a fact that is expressly recognized by the British government in the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Americans at…

With the publication of the Declaration of Independence, we may say that we come to the beginning of the United States as a union of mature political societies. Of course, we could have an interesting and probably interminable conversation about the origins of the United States if we look for what we might call the “seeds” of the people from England…

On August 24, 410 A.D., an army of the Germanic Visigoth tribe invaded and sacked Rome. The attack shocked people of the Mediterranean world and many began to believe that the ancient gods of Rome were punishing Romans for abandoning them in favor of the Jewish God, Jesus of Nazareth. In response to this furor,…

The Canadian philosopher George Parkin Grant has observed that Canada and the United States are two countries of European origin with no history before the modern period. In the United States, this fact has led to an ongoing debate about when we began as a country. In considering this phenomenon, we should be clear that…

James Danielson, PhD Anne-Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein (1766-1817), known as Madame de Stael (commonly pronounced “de Stall”), was a French writer and political theorist whose writings were widely read in her lifetime and long after. She was alarmed at Napoleon’s belligerent adventures in Europe and wrote to him aggressively about it, which prompted Bonaparte to demand of his servants that they…

In the last issue of “Front and Center,” we examined the nature of the American state and began to consider how early Americans worked out a way for the states to effect their security within a union that protected their liberty. In this issue, we will describe the American political order that prevailed among us…

The Philadelphia Convention concluded its business on 17, September 1787. Ten days later, on 27, September, there appeared the first of seven letters written to the citizens of New York under the pseudonym “Cato.” The letters are intended to help New Yorkers think about the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed new constitution.[i] It isn’t known…