The American Revolution and Universal Government: Part Two

[This is part two of a series, here is part one.]

Imagine Jefferson's excitement as he witnessed the beginnings of the French Revolution, towards the end of his tenure as ambassador to Versailles. For to him it certainly appeared then as the next phase of a global revolution that had been sparked in America: a republican revolution that would lead to the destruction of all monarchies and the apotheosis of popular sovereignty.

Jefferson's mindset, in particular of all the founders, was amenable to universal government. There is some irony in that, because he was a localist who usually meant Virginia when he said 'my country'. He was a 'federalist' in the technical sense of the term: that is, he thought government should layer like a Russian doll, with only necessary powers passed up by the people to each higher level in turn:

It is by division and subdivision of duties alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to perfection. [TJ to Samuel Kercheval, 12 July 1816]

In that letter Jefferson began with the Federal government as the highest power, and proceeded by 'division and subdivision' to his famous 'ward republics'. But as he often did himself, we can quite easily reverse the line of thought: if wards are federated into counties, counties into states, and so on, the theory points towards a universal federation. Jefferson was visionary enough to project a continental one. Moreover, his post-mercantilist (that is, free trade) approach to foreign policy sets out the terms of such a global system. If, as David Hendrickson says, the politics of American union was international politics, we can again turn over the coin: the revolutionary ideal turns foreign policy into the politics of union.

Returning to France, the general problem is this: if the French revolution in its early stages could be seen as an extension of the republican spirit of '76, was there some point when that conception became untenable? Most Americans turned off the Jacobins very quickly. Jefferson held out even through the beginning of the Terror: it was Napoleon's monarchical triumph that finished it for him. His disappointment must be comparable to that of Communists in 1956. The revolution had taken a wrong turn. Theory collapses into practice.

But this collapse serves, for my purposes, only to highlight that the theory was there in the first place. The spirit of the revolution in America embraces global uprising against absolutism, and a universal republican government.