The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789

by Joseph J. Ellis

Madison then unfurled his familiar argument against the systemic weakness of the German, Swiss, and Dutch confederacies: “Does not the history of these confederacies coincide with the lessons drawn from our own experience?” He went on to answer his own rhetorical question: “A Government that relies on thirteen independent sovereignties for the means of its existence is a solecism in theory, and a mere nullity in practice.”45 These were not arguments familiar to Henry, nor arguments often heard within the precincts of Virginia, which were the only precincts Henry cared about. He was an ardent confederationist who presumed that Virginia would remain the dominant nation-state and that both his own political power base and, as he saw it, the majority of Virginians had more to lose than gain by joining a larger union. In a very real sense, Henry and Madison were talking past each other, for they harbored fundamentally different views of America’s future. The great virtue of the Henry-Madison debate was to make that fundamental difference abundantly clear.