Franklin Redivivus: The Radical Constitution, 1791-1799

Abstract

This article focuses on a concerted intellectual and political movement for the reform of the U.S. constitution, led by a constellation of radicals based in Philadelphia and inspired by the constitutional example of the French Republic. In response to what radical journalists like Benjamin Franklin Bache and Thomas Paine perceived to be the monarchial drift of the late Washington administration, they began to press for a drastic reform of the U.S. Constitution, pointing to the more egalitarian French constitution with its powerful unicameral legislature and weak plural executive, as their model. Through a survey of radical newspapers, pamphlets, and letters this paper reconstructs this mostly unknown constitutional polemic, as well as the sharp response it drew from John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and other committed American defenders of the British constitution. A prologue establishes the enduring importance of Benjamin Franklin and the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776 for philosophes and radicals in both France and America. Part I examines the radical argument for restricting the prerogatives of the upper chamber, which proliferated in the aftermath of the Jay Treaty and pivoted on the supposedly more egalitarian unicameralism of the French constitutions of 1791 and 1793. Part II traces the radical argument for replacing the presidency with a plural executive committee, modeled on the French Directory of 1795, on the grounds that such an arrangement was not only less warped by monarchism, but also more suited to times of war and exigency, as demonstrated by the astonishing military success of the French Republic. The arguments presented here thus underline the surprising fragility and contingency of the constitutional settlement in the early republic and highlight the powerful Atlantic currents that shaped American constitutional debate in the era of the French Revolution.