American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

by Joseph J. Ellis

For we need to remember that the American colonies had declared their independence as sovereign states, so that any shift in sovereignty from the state to the federal level was a repudiation of “the spirit of ’76.” Madison made the opposite case, arguing that such a shift in sovereignty represented a rescue of the revolution rather than a betrayal of its core principles: We can no longer doubt that the crisis is arrived at which the good people of America are to decide the solemn question, whether they will reap the fruits of that Independence and of that Union which they have cemented with so much of their common blood, or whether by giving way to unmanly jealousies and prejudices, or to partial and transitory interests, they will renounce the auspicious blessings prepared for them by the Revolution, and furnish its enemies an eventual triumph over those by whose virtue & valor it has been accomplished.13 There were profound implications to his new political posture, for Madison was insisting upon a fresh understanding of what the American Revolution meant if it was to live up to its name.