Planning an Essay (Continued)

[Continued from here]

5) applying this approach to aspects of Federalist thought. The most important issue in the politics of the 1780s was [financial] debt and responsibility: there is a clear metaphorical connection to family relations and its notions of freedom and control, which can be analysed. Intergenerational justice more broadly is also key. Western expansion is a difficult issue for Federalist thinkers. So is the question of slavery. Finally, conceptions of representation and government, the overarching constitutional issue, can now be approached in this new light. Federalist impulses cherished freedom and social control; it was part of their coming of age.

6) return to the historiography. All this relates to the problem of liberalism and republicanism, and relates the two to each other in a new way. Both can be seen as forms of social control, but while the latter is overt the former is covert: it thus offers a mirage of freedom. Federalists' contradictory impulses spurred the imaginative political innovation of the 1780s, as they sought a way to resolve the tension between freedom and responsibility/order. Both liberal and republican elements were necessary, but the tendency was necessarily a movement towards liberal, covert forms of social control, which seemingly created order out of freedom.