Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://gradweb.ucumberlands.edu/dr-nathan-coleman * http://www.ucumberlands.edu/directory/dr-aaron-n-nathan-coleman * https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498500623/The-American-Revolution-State-Sovereignty-and-the-American-Constitutional-Settlement-1765%E2%80%931800 * http://www.loyalistresearchnet.org/node/117
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Cumberland College, B.S., 2001; University of Louisville, M.A., 2003; University of Kentucky, Ph.D., 2008.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, historian, lecturer, editor, and educator. University of the Cumberlands, associate professor of history and higher education and history department chair. Strategic Broadening Seminars, U.S. Army, guest lecturer. Speaker and presenter at academic meetings, conferences, and symposia.
MEMBER:Ciceronian Society (cofounder).
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe, edited by Stuart Leibiger, Wiley-Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2012.
Contributor to journals and periodicals, including the Journal of the Historical Society.
SIDELIGHTS
Aaron N. Coleman is a historian of early America, with a specialization in the country’s constitutional, political, and ideological history, noted a writer on the University of the Cumberlands website. He serves as an associate professor of history and higher education at the University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Kentucky. He is the cofounder of the Ciceronian Society, an intellectual organization dedicated to the intellectual study of “Tradition, Place, and ‘Things Divine,’” according to the Ciceronian Society’s Facebook page. Coleman holds a B.S. in history from Cumberland College, an M.A. in history from the University of Louisville, and a Ph.D. in early American history from the University of Kentucky.
In The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800, Coleman “reveals the largely forgotten importance of state sovereignty to American constitutionalism,” commented a writer on the Rowman & Littlefield website. In Coleman’s interpretation, the American Founding Fathers did not create a constitutional system based on national sovereignty or on the concept of a national government that exercised sweeping power over the states. Instead, he believes that the country’s founders wanted to create a system in which states maintained individual power and sovereignty. In this way, liberty would be created and preserved at a smaller and more functional level.
Coleman puts forth his argument that many modern scholars, historians, and writers have assumed a nationalist framework for the founding of the United States and that this assumption is incorrect. It doesn’t take into account the full meaning of state power and sovereignty as it was known during the period of the country’s creation. The “nationalist interpretation has not adequately appreciated that state sovereignty was the basis of the Revolution and the Union,” remarked Johnathan O’Neill, writing in the Journal of Southern History. “One of the books’ best facets is its priceless ability to accurately depict the causes which have led to the diminishment of state sovereignty and federalism in most modern studies of founding ideals,” commented a writer on the website of the Tenth Amendment Center.
Coleman’s “argument is well grounded in primary sources and conversant with the vast literature on the subjects it addresses, and this book stands as a competent expression of the state-centered perspective on the Founding,” O’Neill stated. The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800 “gives us a rich redescription of the Founding from a convinced perspective,” O’Neill remarked. The Tenth Amendment Center website contributor commented, “Coleman definitively establishes that the foundation of the United States was not what it has often thought to have been.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of Southern History, August, 2017, Johnathan O’Neill, review of The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800, p. 662.
ONLINE
Ciceronian Society Facebook Page, https://www.facebook.com/ciceroniansociety/ (January 8, 2018).
Loyalist Research Network, http://www.loyalistresearchnet.org/ (January 8, 2018), author profile.
Rowman & Littlefield Website, http://www.rowman.com/ (January 8, 2018), description of The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800.
Tenth Amendment Center Website, http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/ (March 24, 2017), review of The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800.
University of the Cumberlands Website, http://www.ucumberlands.edu/ (January 8, 2018), author faculty profile.
Aaron N. Coleman
Aaron N. Coleman, historian, early America, Loyalists reintegration, Treaty of Peace, American constitutional and political history
University of the Cumberlands
Aaron N. Coleman is an associate professor of history and higher education at the University of the Cumberlands. He received his PhD from the University of Kentucky in 2008. Dr. Coleman’s first book, The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800, will be released in February, 2016 by Lexington Books. In this work, he argues that State Sovereignty was the primary feature of the American constitutional order. One of the chapters of the books focuses heavily on the issue of Loyalist reintegration and the American reception to the 1783 Treaty of Peace. His dissertation, “Loyalists in War, Americans in Peace: The Reintegration of the Loyalists, 1775-1800,” examined the process of Loyalist reintegration. Dr. Coleman argued that reintegration was predominantly socio-legal process that occurred in relatively brief span of time. Dr. Coleman has published an article on the American debates over the Treaty of Peace and Loyalist reintegration and is contributing an article on Loyalist reintegration a process of transitional justice in a volume honoring Robert M. Calhoon. Dr. Coleman is currently working on an edited collection of primary sources on federalism as well as a biography of North Carolina statesman, Thomas Burke.
Email: Nathan.Coleman@ucumberlands.edu
The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800
Hardback$95.00
Paperback$46.99
eBook$44.50
Summary
The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765–1800 reveals the largely forgotten importance of state sovereignty to American constitutionalism. Contrary to modern popular perceptions and works by other academics, the Founding Fathers did not establish a constitutional system based upon a national popular sovereignty nor a powerful national government designed to fulfill a grand philosophical purpose. Instead, most Americans throughout the period maintained that a constitutional order based upon the sovereignty of states best protected and preserved liberty. Enshrining their preference for state sovereignty in Article II of the Articles of Confederation and in the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments to the federal constitution, Americans also claimed that state interposition—the idea that the states should intervene against any perceived threats to liberty posed by centralization—was an established and accepted element of state sovereignty.
Book Details
Author
Aaron N. Coleman is associate professor of history and higher education at the University of the Cumberlands.
Table of Contents
Reviews
Coleman has done a great service to the prestige of the academic community.... For once, an academic book has bucked the groupthink so pervasive in the ivory tower and has given us room to hope. Too bad...[some] will inevitably dismiss it as some 'originalist' fantasy. That will say more about them than it does about Coleman’s skill as a historian or his attention to detail both of which are exemplary, as is his book.
— The Abbeville Blog
Properly understanding the American constitutional founding is both vital and difficult. Professor Coleman has mastered the large and complex literature of the subject and given us a refreshing new perspective. It turns out that, after all, the role of the States was more important than we have been led to believe.
— Clyde N. Wilson, University of South Carolina
Aaron N. Coleman's new book on the place of state sovereignty in the Founders' federal system makes clear again what everyone once knew: that 'No taxation without representation' was a claim to government by the state legislatures whose power was primary when the Imperial Crisis began, and that the U.S. Constitution was sold as perpetuating that principle. Contrary to today's trendy teaching, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, and their fellow nationalists lost the battle over the Constitution in 1787–90, and today's system amounts to an inversion of what the Revolution was intended to establish.
— Kevin R. C. Gutzman, Western Connecticut State University, author of James Madison and the Making of America
This groundbreaking book allows readers to understand the Founders’ vision for the American Republic with greater accuracy and scrupulousness than previously available, and while the scholarship of myriad historians and political theorists are critiqued with great care, this study recovers the authentic basis for the political compact and the perpetuation of the regime. The book constitutes a significant accomplishment.
— H. Lee Cheek Jr., East Georgia State College
Nathan Coleman treads new ground in the history of the United States under the Articles of Confederation. By purposefully avoiding the standard ‘nationalist’ narrative of the Founding era, Coleman successfully challenges a number of long-held assumptions about the origin of American constitutionalism. He boldly explains deep disagreements among American local and national leaders—many long since forgotten or overshadowed by those we venerate today. In doing so, Coleman sheds new light on early commitments to states’ rights, the purpose of political independence, the initial goals of the American union, and concerns about the sustainability of the Articles of Confederation.
— Carey M. Roberts, Liberty University
[This book] is an important contribution to our understanding of the founding era.
— Journal of American History
Dr. Aaron N. (Nathan) Coleman
Title:
Associate Professor of History and Department Chair
Department:
History
Office:
Bennett Building
Email:
nathan.coleman@ucumberlands.edu
Biography:
Hailing from Inez, KY, Aaron received his B.S. in History in 2001 from Cumberland College. Aaron took a M.A. in history from the University of Louisville (2003) and PhD in Early American History from the University of Kentucky. Aaron’s primary research interests are in political, ideological, and constitutional history. He has published several articles and numerous book reviews in leading journals in history and has presented papers at a number of conferences and symposiums as well as invited guest speaker at several speaking forums. Aaron is also a co-founder of the Ciceronian Society and an editor and contributor to Nomocracy in Politics: Liberty, Prudence, Imperfection, and Law. Aaron has also been a guest lecturer for the United States Army’s Strategic Broadening Seminars, and the Intercollegiate Institute Summer Honors Program as well as a guest judge for the We the People Civics contest.
The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016).
Debating Federalism: From the Founding to Today co-editing with Christopher S. Leskiw. Book Under Contract with Lexington Books.
Justice and Moderation?: The Reintegration of the American Loyalists as an Episode of Transitional Justice” in Joseph Moore and Rebecca Brannon, eds., Loyalty and Revolution: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Calhoon (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press: forthcoming, (2017).
“'A Second Bounaparty?' A Reexamination of Alexander Hamilton During the Franco-American Crisis, 1796–1801,” JER, 28 (2008):183-214.
“Debating the Nature of State Sovereignty: Nationalists, State Sovereigntists, and the Treaty of Paris (1783), Journal of the Historical Society 12 (Fall 2012):309-340.
“President James Madison’s Domestic Policies, 1809-1817: Jeffersonian Factionalism and the Beginnings of American Nationalism” in Stuart Leibiger, ed. A Companion to James Madison and James Monroe (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012): 192-207.
Essays For Nomocracy (Published As Nathan Coleman):
“Federalism, Republicanism, and Liberty: The Significance of the Intellectual Background to the Burke Amendment”
“Using the English Bill of Rights to Check Presidential Power”
“The United States as Three Republics: An Unorthodox Constitutional History”
“Republican Liberty Perishes with a Whimper”
The American Revolution, State
Sovereignty, and the American
Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800
Johnathan O'Neill
Journal of Southern History.
83.3 (Aug. 2017): p662+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Full Text:
The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800. By
Aaron N. Coleman. (Lanham, Md., and other cities: Lexington Books, 2016. Pp. xii, 259. $95.00, ISBN
978-1-49850062-3.)
The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800
offers itself as a revisionist history of the American Founding that corrects what author Aaron N. Coleman
calls the "nationalist" conventional wisdom (p. 3). Scholars in thrall to this syllabus of errors, including
major figures in the field, are said to have read their approval of later centralization back onto the Founding
era. The nationalist interpretation has not adequately appreciated that state sovereignty was the basis of the
Revolution and the Union, and that it endured throughout the Founding era, despite the contrary designs of
Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist allies. This thesis is pursued through all the major events of the
period: from the rationale for the separation from Britain through the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.
The argument is well grounded in primary sources and conversant with the vast literature on the subjects it
addresses, and this book stands as a competent expression of the state-centered perspective on the
Founding.
A major theoretical pillar of Coleman's argument, adopted from Michael Oakeshott by way of M. E.
Bradford, is the distinction between a nomocratic and a teleocratic political order. A nomocratic order lays
out processes and methods for addressing common concerns, for making decisions, and for limiting power.
A teleocratic order aims to achieve a specific philosophical objective or grand political project. This
distinction is invoked throughout the book, though not in the depth of Oakeshott or Bradford. In practice,
Federalists are condemned as teleocratic for wanting to centralize power in the federal government; AntiFederalists
and Jeffersonian Republicans are valorized for wanting the opposite. Sometimes (and without
explanation) the former term is rendered as "teleological." The reader is left to wonder whether this
difference is intended to carry any meaning. Nevertheless, by use of this distinction, and by other
indications, it is clear that the author has subtly but designedly aligned himself with Bradford's version of
traditionalist-localist constitutional conservatism. Thus the revolt of 1776 is tendentiously described as
"secession from the British Empire"; similarly. New Hampshire's ratification of the Constitution completed
"the secession from the Articles of Confederation" (pp. 39, 127). Are we thus meant to regard that later and
infamous attempted secession as just one more legitimate appeal to state sovereignty? Coleman offers a
12/24/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1514143712414 2/2
large clue in the conclusion's statement that it was Abraham Lincoln and the "Federalist-cum-Republican
vision of the sovereignty of national government that emerged triumphant during the Civil War, and became
enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment" (p. 237). The Civil War resulted in the "second American
constitutional settlement that governs America today" (p. 238). To suggest that our modern Leviathan
derived from the Federalists and Lincoln, rather than the Progressives and their heirs in the New Deal and
Great Society, is to misunderstand the foundation and salvation of limited republican government in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the causes of its erosion in the twentieth century.
It is quite debatable, often on the author's own evidence, whether the "constitutional settlement" of the
book's title was ever truly settled. The book portrays Federalists as teleocratic backsliders, promise breakers
on the topic of state sovereignty and the limits it was meant to impose on the federal government. But this
interpretation overestimates the amount of theoretical clarity and agreement that existed. The desire for a
stronger central government that could affect citizens directly and defend them adequately coexisted with
the desire for limits on its reach in deference to the local authority of the states. Just how to balance these
imperatives was not something agreed to once and for all and then deviously abandoned. It was worked out
over time as the Constitution was interpreted and put into effect (two inseparable facets of the same
process). Constitutional politics happened. Interests and principles clashed; institutions were designed on
paper and then functioned in reality.
In sum, this book gives us a rich redescription of the Founding from a convinced perspective, but it is
skewed by insufficient appreciation that the action it reports was always a political contest over
constitutional meaning--not apostasy by one group against the true faith retained by another. Finally, in this
reviewer's opinion the volume is marred by poor editing. Every few pages there are typographical errors,
grammatical errors, missing words, or distracting malapropisms that undermine the expression of the
author's ideas and reflect poorly on the publisher.
Johnathan O'Neill
Georgia Southern University
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
O'Neill, Johnathan. "The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional
Settlement, 1765-1800." Journal of Southern History, vol. 83, no. 3, 2017, p. 662+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501078123/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0c0f80d8.
Accessed 24 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501078123
The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement
You are here:
HomeBook and Movie Reivews
Every so often, a book comes out that shatters orthodox perspectives concerning the American founding. By challenging standard narratives, including previously undiscovered context, and contrasting the political system of the United States to other examples in the world, Aaron Coleman’s The American Revolution, State Sovereignty, and the American Constitutional Settlement, 1765-1800 does just that. Undoubtedly, Coleman definitively establishes that the foundation of the United States was not what it has often thought to have been.
Bringing readers on a journey through constitutional history, Coleman cites masterful experts on the British constitutional system, including Jack Greene and John Brewer, to highlight orthodox political perceptions of the founding era. He invokes the work of Blackstone and Coke, both highly studied by the American founders, to capture the constitutional context and reveal established political precedents of the time. By weaving British context into the American constitutional tapestry, Coleman enunciates the contradictory path of the two constitutional systems.
Coleman also addresses the 170 years of colonial history, which has been often ignored by historians, to defend his case. As he notes, from their humble beginnings onward, the colonies gradually developed distinct societies, all with individual and independent cultural, religious, and governmental structures. These are the circumstances that set the American colonies on a divergent path from that of their English brethren – who in 1688 had established the supremacy of Parliament through the Glorious Revolution of 1688. While Britain claimed the juncture elevated Parliament to that of a superlative legislature over the entire empire, the American Whigs came to a completely different conclusion on the grounds that their colonies were independently established and localized. In this way, the candid embrace of American federalism existed even before the colonies declared independence.
Another appealing aspect of Coleman’s work concerns the actual impact of the Philadelphia Convention and the Constitution of 1787 on the American constitutional system. While some scholars have been inclined to portray the Constitution as a much more nationalistic, centralizing document, Coleman astutely recognizes that the modern Constitution retained the federalist-orientation of the union, its most recognizable and unique plank.
Bolstering Coleman’s position is the innumerable cases in which clauses from the Articles of Confederation were either incorporated verbatim or slightly modified. Though some new powers were delegated to Congress under the new model, to the chagrin of American nationalists – Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, and Charles Pinckney – most of the aims of the great centralizers lost out. This was most apparent by the shift from general, plenary legislative authority to John Rutledge’s preference of enumerated powers, and the defeat of Madison’s cherished hope of a federal veto over state law.
These circumstances led Hamilton to conclude that the ideas of the resulting document were “far removed” from his own, and for Madison to complain to Jefferson that the document would not be stable enough to survive for more than a generation. As a result of these findings and others, all of which are masterfully illustrated, Coleman explains why the Constitution of 1787 was “not a fundamental change” to the constitutional framework.
One of the books’ best facets is its priceless ability to accurately depict the causes which have led to the diminishment of state sovereignty and federalism in most modern studies of founding ideals. Coleman does this by quoting progressive scholars such as Akhil Amar and Merrill Jensen, who have expressly admitted the propensity of most academics to view the founding period through nationalist lenses.
However, Coleman dutifully exposes how modern reinterpretations are not wholly to blame for the abandonment of the original hallmarks of the decentralized political system guaranteed by the Federalists. As Coleman points out, the economic platform of Alexander Hamilton represented a true breach of promises of Federalists during the ratification process.
51IQS9Y7wjL._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_By having all state debts assumed by the central government, instituting a highly objectionable National Bank, and a pitch for a system of protective tariffs and corporate subsidies, the spiritual figurehead of the Federalist Party did much to unravel the threads of federalism even as early as the first presidential administration. Of course, the situation was compounded by the Jay Treaty, an attempt at judicial overreach via Chisholm v. Georgia and the Alien and Sedition Acts, all of which gets proper coverage in the work.
Better than anything else, Coleman reveals the extent to which federalism – not nationalism – was the chief cornerstone of the American political system. “Few realize that debates over the nature of sovereignty and federalism are as old as the founding itself,” Coleman explains. Rather establish a “powerful central government of a grand purpose,” the author correctly asserts that the American states “established a decentralized federal order rooted in the idea of state sovereignty.”
Rather than “one nation, indivisible,” Coleman’s narrative makes it evident that “a league of states, clearly independent and sovereign” was actually the chief conception of the American constitutional settlement. As Coleman notes, federalism was actually the “bedrock” of the American constitutional order.
By bringing federalism and state sovereignty to the forefront of his tale, Coleman does what many scholars have neglected to do for decades. Taking a relatively familiar story but giving it a fresh and truly important re-examination, he has created a book that stands among its alternatives as a diamond in the rough. If there was any great corollary to my own investigation into federalism’s true influence in the American system, if would be Coleman’s.