Viewing American History With Sturge: 1790s Part 2

Welcome back to Viewing American History with Sturge.

Picking up where we left off last time, the French Revolution had a decidedly conservative impact on the young United States. Overall, moderation became the flavor of the day and clothing reflected the shift. But what did sociopolitical moderation look like in practice and when did it begin exactly?

Well, some historians contend that early American liberalism gave way to national moderation when the Constitution went into effect in 1789. The Constitution, they contend, constrained the revolutionary spirit and emphasized law, structure, and property rights more than equity, egalitarianism, and individual liberty.

“Let’s stop being liberal revolutionaries and start being conservative Federalists on three, OK, one, two, three, BREAK!”

I’m not a fan of that interpretation because it dismisses the reality that it’s a great deal harder to implement a functionally liberal nation than to imagine one. A constitutional and operational nation was never going to fulfill its most grandiose ambitions and, without that foundational structure, those ambitions would have died out state by state, anyhow.

Though imperfect, the Constitution and accompanying Bill of Rights were still abundantly liberal…