A
foremost constitutional scholar and expositor of the compact nature of
the American Union, Dr. Donald W. Livingston’s writings and lectures
highlight the spirit of American republicanism – true federalism,
nullification, secession. He is president of the acclaimed Abbeville
Institute, well-known for training and nurturing future Southern
scholars -- his lectures can be found via the www.abbevilleinstitute.org website. The following article was published in the May 2009 issue of Chronicles. (www.chroniclesmagazine.org)
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Is America a Republic?
“The
United States is not now and has never been a republic. It is a
federation of states, each one of which, in Article IV of the
Constitution, is guaranteed a republican form of government. But a
federation of republics is not itself a republic any more than a
federation of nations in the United Nations, or in the European Union,
is a nation.
Whatever
else a republic might be, it is not a service agency of something
else. So instead of talking about “restoring the old Republic,” we
should talk of restoring republicanism in a federation of states. And
this can only mean recalling the vast domain of enumerated powers that
the Constitution reserves to the states and which have been usurped by
that artificial corporation, known as the United States, created by the
states for their welfare.
This
is not a quibble with words. To talk of the Republic inclines one to
think of America as a single political society in the manner of Joseph
Story, Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln. In this view, the states are
service agencies created by the sovereign will of the American people in
the aggregate. That will is expressed through the central government,
which, for all practical purposes, has the final say on the limits of
its power.
This
means that the states are merely administrative units of a unitary
American state. If so, they are not republics at all, but counties. This
is how Lincoln viewed them. He asked, “What is this particular
sacredness of a State? . . . If a State, in one instance, and a county,
in another, should be equal in extent of territory, and equal in number
of people, where is that State any better than a county?”
Lincoln
was tone deaf to the deep social bonds that made it rational for
Socrates to take the hemlock and Jefferson Davis to say that if his
state seceded he would “hug [Mississippi] to his heart,” and Robert E.
Lee to risk all to protect his beloved Virginia.
A
Lincoln scholar, and an admirer, recently acknowledged that “[Lincoln]
was intimately attached to almost no one, and this was how he believed
community relationships -- local, state, and national – should best
function . . . Lincoln imagined America was a nation of strangers.”
This is a perfect picture of a modern unitary state, modeled on that of
Thomas Hobbs, with an all-powerful central authority guaranteeing
rootless and egoistic individuals their “civil rights.”
It
is this unitary state, “one and indivisible,” that Lincoln and the
Republican party meant when they spoke of “the Republic.” But such a
regime is no more a republic than is the “republic” of the French
Revolution or the Peoples’ Republic of China. When Lincoln looked at
Virginia he could not see a genuine political society two-and-a-half
centuries old; one that was the leader in forming the American
federation; fable in song and story; and known as the mother of
presidents and the mother of states [including Lincoln’s own).
All
he could see was an aggregate of individuals in rebellion against “the
Republic” – the central government of a would-be Hobbesian unitary
state.
Before
Lincoln’s “republican” rhetoric, Americans most often described their
polity as a “union,” a “federation,” or a “confederation.” And when it
was described as a “republic” or a “nation,” it was usually understood
to mean a federation or a union.
For example, in a speech celebrating the 50th
anniversary of the Constitution, John Quincy Adams describes America as
a “confederated nation,” held together by “kindly sympathies” and
“common interests.” And he went on to say that, should these social
bonds fail, “far better will it be for the people of the disunited
states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together
by constraint.”
Thirteen
years later Adams would sign a document stating that the annexation of
Texas would justify the secession of New England. That is the spirit of
American republicanism – rooted, as it must be, in a bold
acknowledgment of state and local sovereignty.
The
first step toward restoring genuine republicanism is to invert the
Lincolnian inversion of republican language by describing America as a
federation, not a republic. Today, such speech might appear odd and
even radical. But there is no alternative. Talk of “restoring the
Republic” cannot escape connotations of the inverted Lincolnian
“Republic.” But that regime does not need restoration. Not only is it
flourishing, it is now on steroids.”
(Is America a Republic?, Dr. Donald Livingston; Chronicles Magazine, May 2009, pp. 17-18)
