John Taylor of Caroline’s Construction Construed, and Constitutions Vindicated and New Views of the Constitution of the United States — with Some Reflections on European Union

Abstract

The American Revolutionary period, from 1763 to 1789, may be seen as a series both of conflicts about local autonomy and of experiments in confederation and federation building. Thereafter, as the federal government gradually grew stronger, its strengthening caused a deepening controversy in the South and North, surfacing into crises with the Alien and Sedition Laws, the Louisiana Purchase, the Hartford Convention, and the Missouri Compromise. The extension of slavery eventually became the paramount issue, of course, but the protective tariff, the national bank, and internal improvements all provoked intense debate about the relative powers of the states and of the federal government. During the first American decades states feared consolidation, thought challenges to political rights would proceed from the centre, and fought Washington over issues that now appear to have been settled, not least by the Northern victory in 1865. Slavery and Southern rebellion seemed to verify that danger could easily proceed from the periphery, and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment subsequently protected constitutionally guaranteed rights from state abuse. The twentieth century, especially through the long Democratic dominance of the federal government during the New Deal and its aftermath (from 1933 to roughly 1980), confirmed federal primacy.