That New England might invade Virginia is inconceivable today. But
interstate rivalries and the possibility of intersectional war
loomed large in the thinking of the Framers who convened in
Philadelphia in 1787 to put on paper the ideas that would bind the
federal union together.
At the end of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin
rejoiced that the document would "astonish our enemies, who are
waiting to hear with confidence . . . that our States are on the
point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of
cutting one another's throats." Usually dismissed as hyperbole,
this and similar remarks by other Founders help us to understand
the core concerns that shaped their conception of the Union. By
reexamining the creation of the federal system of the United States
from a perspective that yokes diplomacy with constitutionalism,
Hendrickson's study, according to Karl Walling, "introduces a new
way to think about what is familiar to us."
This ground breaking book, then, takes a fresh look at the
formative years of American constitutionalism and diplomacy. It
tells the story of how thirteen colonies became independent states
and found themselves grappling with the classic problems of
international cooperation, and it explores the intellectual milieu
within which that problem was considered. The founding generation,
Hendrickson argues, developed a sophisticated science of
international politics relevant both to the construction of their
own union and to the foreign relations of "the several states in
the union of the empire." The centrality of this discourse, he
contends, must severely qualify conventional depictions of early
American political thought as simply "liberal" or "republican."
Hendrickson also takes issue with conventional accounts of early
American foreign policy as "unilateralist" or "isolationist" and
insists that the founding generation belonged to and made
distinguished contributions to the constitutional tradition in
diplomacy, the antecedent of twentieth-century internationalism. He
describes an American system of states riven by deep sectional
animosities and powerful loyalties to colonies and states (often
themselves described as "nations") and explains why in such a
milieu the creation of a durable union often appeared to be a
quixotic enterprise. The book culminates in a consideration of the
making of the federal Constitution, here styled as a peace pact or
experiment in international cooperation.
"Peace Pact" is an important book that promises to revolutionize
our understanding of the era of revolution and constitution-making.
Written in a lucid and accessible style, the book is an excellent
introduction to the American founding and its larger significance
in American and world history.
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