Washington Administrative Research Articles

Has the 2016 Election Institutionalized Systemic Social Exclusion and Violence in America—and Perhaps Paved the Way for Authoritarianism and the Possible “Social Death” of Groups Perceived as Undesirable to the New Administration in Washington?

Has the 2016 Election Institutionalized Systemic Social Exclusion and Violence in America—and Perhaps Paved the Way for Authoritarianism and the Possible "Social Death" of Groups Perceived as Undesirable to the New Administration in Washington? Aliza Luft (bio) "Our institutions will save us." This phrase, repeated time and again as reassurance in the face of mounting uncertainty following the 2016 presidential election, is not without merit. America has long prided itself on the stability of its institutions—on the stability of its democracy and the assumption that its institutions function to undergird, serve, and protect it. However, when the question of social death emerges, we must ask ourselves: [End Page 203] whom have our institutions historically served, whom have our institutions historically excluded, and how, given the clear and unflinching evidence that some groups are more desirable to the new administration in Washington than others, can we learn from the past to confront the present and shore up our institutions so that they are truly representative of all who live in America in the future? In the following essay, I will answer these questions while making historical comparisons with social death mechanisms in the United States. I will then argue that although we are at risk of normalizing further and regressive efforts to produce the social death of victimized subgroups, not only have such efforts never been able to succeed due to the active, constant, and creative resistance of targeted populations, but also perhaps this new phase in which the current administration is preying on so many categories of people simultaneously is presenting us with an opportunity to expand our ideas of Americanness and to ensure that our institutions protect us all. What Is Social Death? Social death is a term originally conceived by the sociologist Orlando Patterson to describe the peculiar violence of slavery, which, according to him, was distinct for its denial of personhood via the persistent destruction of social relationships, including natal and genealogical ties.1 Though often interpreted to describe the existential condition of the enslaved, in recent years, scholars have sought to examine social death as a process and experience and not a state of being.2 Following this, the concept of social death has become more useful as a theory of power and domination than as a characterization of the everyday lives of living, breathing subjugated individuals. In turn, there has been a boom in research that examines the mechanisms that function to produce social death as well as the strategies of victimized populations to resist such violence through brave efforts to "make social meaning from the threat of anomie."3 Below, I briefly describe three of these mechanisms and historic efforts to defy them before turning to assess their persistence in, and legacy for, the current political context. The process of social death comprises three mechanisms: first, the dispossession of individuals of their meaningful social relationships and histories;4 second, the classification of individuals into groups on the basis of inferior traits deemed inherent and immutable;5 and third, the construction of systems and institutions that serve to [End Page 204] separate subjugated bodies in physical space—be it in plantations, ghettos, camps, reservations, or prisons. As shorthand, we can refer to these three mechanisms as extraction, essentialization, and segregation. Combined, they aim to produce the demolition of people's baseline rights to equal personhood within society. Following this, when we define the social death process as a concatenation of mechanisms that serve to totally subjugate entire categories of persons by denying them their heritage, relegating them to an innately inferior status, and separating them from the rest of the population, it becomes clear that social death processes and resistant actions to oppose them have been central to American politics since the founding of the United States itself. Whom Have Our Institutions Historically Served? Whom Have Our Institutions Historically Excluded? American democracy developed alongside the construction of racial ideology. Although slavery, indentured servitude, and other forms of unpaid labor were widespread in colonial America, it was the rise of republicanism—the idea that all men are created equal and freedom is their natural state of being—that necessitated justifying the lack of equality...

FIRST AND SECOND DRAFTS OF HISTORY: THE CASE OF TRUMP, FOUCAULT AND PRE-MODERN GOVERNANCE

How do we, as scholars – social scientists and historians – respond to momentous contemporary events? Our instincts urge caution, but the events demand action. While blogs and other media offer some paths, they can veer too much towards the snap judgments associated with bad journalism and simplistic representation. This paper consists of two essays, one embedded in the other, that challenge us to think differently about news, social science, and history. The impetus comes from an attempt to make sense of the first, muddled weeks of the new Trump administration in Washington. With reference to Foucault’s concept of governmentality, it reflects on how the CEO-in-Chief at the White House seemed to invoke a form of pre-modern governance, reminiscent of the divine right of kings and echoing a case in the not-too-distant past of a lapse in corporate governance. The main essay then resumes to consider what this means about academic writing and publishing, and what it might mean in terms of new forms of scholarly communication and impact about current affairs, as the first, rough draft of history passes into and through a second. [This paper is is available open access as a SHERPA/RoMEO publication by the publishers, Addleton Academic Publishers.]

A Critical Comment on the Constitutionality of Executive Privilege

As a proponent of the view that the Constitution enshrines a unitary executive capable of superintending federal law execution, I reach these tentative conclusions with a great deal of reluctance. As noted earlier, a chief executive armed with a constitutional right to conceal communications surely would be a more effective enforcer of federal law and superintendent of foreign affairs. But we ought not to confuse the undoubted utility of an inherent executive privilege with its constitutionality. As we shall see, under our Constitution, something can be absolutely indispensable and yet be unavailable to the President as of right. Thus, while favoring a narrow executive privilege, I believe that Congress must confer such a privilege. Part I summarizes some of the arguments in favor of recognizing a constitutionalized executive privilege. Part II analyzes text and structure, informed by snippets of history to cast doubt on the constitutionality of an executive privilege. Part III examines historical practices during the Washington administration relevant to the issue at hand. Given the nature of the comment, the conclusions are necessarily tentative. While I have searched for pre-ratification discussions of something resembling our notion of executive privilege, I have not done as thorough a search as possible. Nor have I examined at great length all the primary documents. Accordingly, I largely rely upon the excellent work of Professors Mark Rozell, William Van Alstyne, Abraham Sofaer, and others in reaching my historical conclusions.

Hamilton versus Jefferson in the Washington administration: completing the founding or betraying the founding?

Hamilton versus Jefferson in the Washington administration: completing the founding or betraying the founding?

Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations, by Michael Jabara Carley

Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations, by Michael Jabara Carley. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. xvii, 478 pp. $45.00 US (cloth). This book--handsome in appearance, with the watercolor New Horseman by Nicolai Kogut adorning its front cover--is a study of the relations of the USSR and the major Western powers between 1917 and April of 1931. The study begins with the USSR's inception in October (O.S.) 1917 and concludes with a major agreement between the German and USSR governments. Under the terms of the agreement, the German government advanced 300 million marks to Moscow and the treaty of friendship between the two governments, first signed in 1922, then renewed in 1926, was renewed yet a third time. Let it be said at once. What Michael Jabara Carley has produced here is indeed a fine and impressive work, one that fills an important gap in the literature. It is hard to think of anyone else who could have brought the experience, the insights, and the quality of analytical scrutiny that Carley has given to this subject. The book's thirteen chapters examine all the great events that marked the hidden history of early Soviet-Western relations in the years between 1917 and 1930--the struggles of the new government to gain diplomatic recognition from the Western Powers; the treaty of Rapallo and the Genoa conference; the various attempts of the two sides to conclude trade and credit agreements; Moscow's struggles to achieve military security; Anglo-Soviet disputes over China; and the repeated panics and tensions with France so sharp that at one point in 1927 they resulted in the recall of the Soviet ambassador. These events also provided the background against which the titanic struggle between Josef Stalin and Leon Trotsky played itself out. The first thing to be said about this volume is the author's mastery of the overwhelming--indeed (to this reviewer's eyes) almost unmanageable--abundance of source material, not only the enormous collections of public documentary evidence but, above all, the comparable documents of the Russian Foreign Ministry for the period in question that have never before seen publication. Carley has made extensive use of these new sources and he does so in a vigorous style. The underlying theme of the book is the conflict that took place between the two sides during the thirteen years in question. Conflict is an understatement. It was nothing less than a clash of two worlds: the Western, whose reaction to the other provided precious little room for compromise; and the Soviet which, though certainly animated by an abiding hostility toward the West, often attempted to season dogma with pragmatism--that is, to change Western views. Throughout this period there continued to exist in the West a substantial, politically influential, and aggressive body of opinion to exorcise the spectre of a great and fearful external enemy. The Die-Hard triumvirate in Great Britain, the Bloc Nationale in France, and successive Republican administrations in Washington, blocked Soviet efforts to improve relations at every turn. …

The Historical Presidency: Competing Conceptions of the Separation of Powers: Washington's Request for an Advisory Opinion in the Crisis of 1793

President Washington's request for a formal advisory opinion at the height of the neutrality crisis and the Supreme Court's refusal to grant his request have never received more than passing attention from political scientists. Yet these events bear directly on fundamental issues regarding the purpose and practice of the separation of powers and the relation between a republican government and the citizenry it serves. In this article, I argue that, properly understood, Washington's request and the Court's refusal shed new light on the underlying theoretical rationale for executive–judicial cooperation and the political dangers of this cooperation. Moreover, by attending to the actions of the Washington administration in the aftermath of the Court's refusal, I show that the manner in which presidents interact with the people cannot be neatly separated from the institutional relationships between the branches of government.

The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy by Jeffrey L. Pasley (review)

Reviewed by: The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy by Jeffrey L. Pasley Jeffrey L. Malanson (bio) The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy. By Jeffrey L. Pasley. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013. Pp. 504. $37.50 cloth) In their efforts to define the elements of formal party systems, social scientists have concluded that the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties were not true political parties. In The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy, Jeffrey L. Pasley argues that this focus on the institutionalized party has distracted historians from the very real partisan developments that took place in the 1790s. “The real importance of parties in the time of the Founders,” Pasley asserts, “is as rather loose but intense communities of political ideology, emotion, and action that took form among politicians, political writers, and their audiences” (p. 6). Throughout The First Presidential Contest, Pasley persuasively demonstrates the variety of ways that the 1790s was a time of real and sustained partisan development. Especially important in conceptualizing the partisanship of the 1796 campaign is Pasley’s call for the reader to “think of political campaigns…as stories: competing public narratives that seek to explain the world to voters in a way that compels a particular choice” (p. 225). From this vantage point it is clear that the partisanship of 1796 might not have been as fully developed as it would eventually become, but it was tangibly there in ways that recent generations of historians have been too quick to overlook. While generally working within the standard narrative of early party development, Pasley carefully presents the emergence of the Democratic-Republican Party as the expression of a liberal opposition mentality sharply contrasted with the more conservative beliefs of the Washington administration and its supporters. Questions of who should rule and what role the public should play in governing—the differences between aristocracy and democracy in the American context—were central in the developing political culture of the period. The great strength of The First Presidential Contest is that in exploring [End Page 287] these issues Pasley aims to offer a “practically minded ‘history from the middle out’ that means to show how politics actually works, how high and low (or ‘grass roots’) politics are connected” (p. 14). This means that, although Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison feature prominently in the book, it is not the founding fathers who drive Pasley’s narrative. In the political culture of the late eighteenth century, the candidates themselves largely refrained from playing an active role in their campaigns, leaving lesser officials and operatives to do much of the work enunciating party ideologies and advancing party candidates. Central actors in Pasley’s story include newspaper editors, pamphlet writers, lower-level party operatives, and individual presidential electors in states with popular voting for electors. The actions of all of these figures—especially Benjamin Franklin Bache, the editor of the Philadelphia General Advertiser/Aurora, and other members of the partisan press—contributed to a vibrant and contentious national politics that resonated in cities and towns across the country and had an impact on their elections. The First Presidential Contest presents a compelling and forward-moving narrative that reflects voluminous research in the print and political cultures of the 1790s. While generally outstanding, I would offer two small critiques. First, Pasley devotes roughly sixty pages to a very thorough consideration of anti-Jefferson essays written by William Loughton Smith in 1792 and 1796, and to Republican responses to A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America by John Adams. There is a lot of fascinating information contained in these pages, but at times it can pull the reader away from the bigger picture. I also quibble with Pasley’s overly partisan reading of what he calls “Washington’s Hamilton-written Farewell Address” (p. 265). On both the authorship of the address and the degree to which Washington intended it as a partisan document, Pasley overstates the case. These are relatively minor complaints about what is otherwise an excellent and extremely valuable study that should change the way historians understand partisan development in...

The President's Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789‐2002. By Jeffrey E.Cohen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 302 pp.

The President's Legislative Policy Agenda, 1789-2002. By Jeffrey E. Cohen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 302 pp. In The Presidents Legislative Policy Agenda, Jeffrey Cohen illustrates how a strategic president considers the congressional context in determining his legislative pursuits. Cohen uses congressional anticipations theory to answer a central question: why do 'divided government' and 'modern' seem to allow themselves to be defeated so often in Congress? (p. 48). Cohen quite convincingly offers the answer. Presidents consider context in deciding the likelihood of legislative success/defeat, and they adjust the legislative agenda accordingly. This book has many contributions, and it is important to discuss each, in turn. First, Cohen incorporates two central concepts in the study of the presidency into the theoretical and empirical efforts of the book. He rightly argues that the effects of divided government and the modern presidency are often viewed as near truisms. However, Cohen uses his data to speak to and refine these settled questions. Second, Cohen develops an impressive data set that spans the first year of the Washington administration to the second year of the George W. Bush administration. Rarely does longitudinal work on the presidency offer such systematic data. Though Cohen notes, understandable reasons exist for the emphasis on modern presidents (p.36), his data allow us to examine historical aspects of the presidency in a rigorous way. Is such comprehensive data possible for every study of the executive branch? No. However, Cohen explains that when possible, such data can only strengthen our theoretical and empirical understanding of the executive branch. Next, the empirical effort in this book is admirable. It is meticulous in both the manner in which it analyzes multiple aspects of the legislative agenda as well as the modeling choices employed. Chapters 4 and 5 examine variation in the size of the agenda and the content of that agenda, clarifying our understanding of the nature and process of agenda-building. These chapters show that strategically withhold proposals from the agenda when context--particularly, divided government--makes enactment less likely. In a friendlier political environment, expand the agenda. Chapter 6 considers the moderation hypothesis, showing that under divided government moderate their legislative agenda in order to improve the chances of enactment. Finally, Chapter 7 examines outputs. How successful is the strategic president in inducing enactment of his legislative proposals? …

“A Savage Feast They Made of It”: John Adams and the Paradoxical Origins of Federal Indian Policy

When it comes to early U.S. leaders’ ideas and actions toward Indian nations, those of John Adams remain relatively unexplored. By closely examining Adams’s relationship with American Indians—more intermittent and marginal in his own thinking when compared with Washington and Jefferson—this essay identifies a set of paradoxes important for understanding the complicated origins of American Indian policy. The Massachusetts politician’s apprehension over warfare with Indian nations peaked during the Revolution, yet his face-to-face contact with Indian people during those years evoked a mix of curiosity, delight, and admiration. Adams wrote much less about Indians than did other early national leaders, but most of his printed references to them are found in nothing less than his major writing about government. As first vice-president of the United States, Adams rather silently witnessed the creation of Indian policy during the Washington Administration. His own presidential administration nevertheless benefited significantly from what had been accomplished during those formative years. Although Adams expressed relatively little interest in the origins and customs of American Indians, he did plenty to embed them deeply within the founding generation’s contrived rationale for American independence from Great Britain. This last paradox is crucial for understanding inconsistencies in U.S. Indian policy as well as shortcomings in historical writing about early U.S.-Indian relations.

Is the Presidentts Recognition Power Exclusive?

The power of the United States government to recognize foreign states and governments is much broader than the authority merely to place a symbolic stamp of legitimacy on that state or government. Recognition allows foreign governments to establish diplomatic relations with the United States and also confers other substantial benefits on those governments. Despite its importance to foreign relations, the recognition power was not enumerated in the United States Constitution or discussed in the Constitutional Convention or ratification debates. A recent decision of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Zivotofsky ex rel. Zivotofsky v. Secretary of State, is the first to hold, in the context of a conflict between an act of Congress and an executive decision, that the recognition of foreign states and governments is an exclusive executive power. A seemingly innocuous passport statute created a conflict between executive and congressional policies over a controversial, and as yet unresolved, political issue: the status of Jerusalem. The court relied on post-ratification history which, it concluded, established that Presidents consistently claimed, and Congress consistently acknowledged, that the recognition power was exclusively an executive prerogative. The passport statute was held to unconstitutionally infringe on the Executive’s recognition power. This Article provides the first in-depth analysis of the historical relationship of the executive and legislative branches to the recognition power in nearly a century. The Article examines in detail the post-ratification recognition events discussed by the Court of Appeals, beginning with the decisions of the Washington administration during the Neutrality Crisis in 1792-93. The Article also examines events not addressed by the Court of Appeals, most significantly early congressional acts of recognition and the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. The Article concludes that post-ratification history establishes an authority in the President to recognize foreign states and governments but provides little support for any claim of an exclusive recognition power. However, post-ratification history is not by itself dispositive and the legal importance of the history is examined through the lens of certain fundamental questions, including the significance of presidential and congressional inactions, acquiescence and acknowledgement. The Article analyzes these questions through constitutional doctrine and normative values, ultimately concluding that the constitutional text, original understanding, structure, and post-ratification evidence do not support an exclusive recognition power in the Executive. The President’s recognition power is subject to the legislative control of Congress.

“A Genuine Republican”:

“A Genuine Republican”:

Revisiting “the Long Night” of Iranian Workers: Labor Activism in the Iranian Oil Industry in the 1960s

AbstractThis article reviews the labor historiography of Iran for the period between the 1953 coup and the early revolutionary activism of late the 1970s, an interlude marked by a lack of histories of labor activism. Based on a qualitative analysis of the types of collective actions that oil workers engaged in during the period, this article argues that contextualizing the struggles of workers and the types of collective actions they engaged in will tell us more about the social and political changes that they experienced and participated in than the search for an ideal type of labor activism. It is argued that the social and political climate of Iran during the 1960s, characterized by political repression and an extensive centralized reform program, added new tactics to workers’ repertoires of action as they made use of the discourse of the regime for their own ends. This study is based on archival research at the International Institute of Social History archives in Amsterdam, the BP archives at Coventry, the National Archives of UK in London, and the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC.

What Does Obama’s Re-election Mean to South Asia

While the world watched the closely contested Presidential elections in the United States in much anticipation, most observers and policy wonks in South Asia were bracing for change or continuity in the foreign policy that the new administration in Washington would herald. Although India received scant mention during the third Presidential debate which was focused exclusively on foreign policy, Pakistan and Afghanistan gained ample attention but with a caveat. There was little differentiated gap between the positions of the two candidates – President Obama and Governor Romney – on ending the war in Afghanistan. It is therefore no surprise that with President Obama's re-election, many in South Asia are bracing for continuity in US foreign policy. However, with his likely focus on legacy and attention towards other hot spots, there are imminent dangers of other South Asian countries taking a back seat in the US foreign policy priorities.

Understanding Barriers to Routine HIV Screening: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Healthcare Providers in King County, Washington

ObjectiveIn 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended routine HIV screening in healthcare settings for persons between 13 and 64 years old. In 2010, the Washington Administrative Code (WAC) was changed to align testing rules with these recommendations. We designed this survey to ascertain the current state of HIV testing and barriers to routine screening in King County, Washington.MethodsBetween March 23 and April 16, 2010, a convenience sample of healthcare providers completed an online survey. Providers answered true-false and multiple choice questions about national recommendations and the WAC, policies in their primary clinical settings, and their personal HIV testing practices. Providers were asked to agree or disagree whether commonly reported barriers limited their implementation of routine HIV screening.ResultsAlthough 76% of the 221 respondents knew that the CDC recommended routine HIV screening for persons regardless of their risk, 99 (45%) providers reported that their primary clinical setting had a policy to target testing based on patient risk factors. Forty-four (20%) providers reported that their primary clinical setting had a policy of routine HIV screening, 54 (25%) reported no official policy, and 15 (7%) did not know whether a policy existed. Only 11 (5%) providers offer HIV testing to all patients at initial visits. When asked about barriers to routine screening, 57% of providers agreed that perception that their patient population is low risk limits the number of HIV tests they perform. Only 26 (13%) providers agreed that concern about reimbursement posed a barrier to testing.ConclusionsMost providers participating in this survey continue to target HIV testing, despite knowledge of national recommendations. Efforts are still needed to educate providers and policymakers, clarify the recent WAC revisions, and implement structural changes in order to increase HIV testing in Washington State.

Прокламация о нейтралитете – ответ администрации Вашингтона на вызов французской революции

Прокламация о нейтралитете – ответ администрации Вашингтона на вызов французской революции

Royall Tyler's The Algerine Captive , America, and the Blind Man of Philosophy

Royall Tyler's The Algerine Captive, America, and the Blind Man of Philosophy Matthew Pangborn (bio) Royall Tyler's early-republic barbary-hostage tale, The Algerine Captive (1797), owns the distinction of being one of America's first novels and one of its least effective abolitionist texts. The story of a white American's enslavement by African pirates, based on historical events during the Washington presidency, Tyler's narrative has challenged readers desiring to rescue a compelling indictment of slavery's practice in the "Barbary states of America" from a satire that just as enthusiastically targets dueling, medical quackery, and classical education. 1 The work's reception has reflected its uneven focus. Hailed as the emergence of a "tough-minded realism" in the American imaginary and as proof the national character developed from sensibility, the novel has been criticized for its irreligion and its piety, for its didacticism as well as for its failure to sustain a "moral imperative." And it has been condemned as derivative of Roderick Random, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Rabelais, Candide, Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative, and Montesquieu's Persian Letters, while lauded for its "intertextuality." 2 Some have suggested The Algerine Captive is not a novel at all, a suggestion I want to resist with the claim the text engages period philosophical issues that had great importance for the former colonies, ones the novel as a genre was particularly well suited to address. 3 If Tyler's text suffers from an identity crisis, in other words, it only too accurately mirrors the new nation's struggle to make a place for itself on the world stage. The Algerine Captive appeared, after all, at a desperate time in American history. Fearing contagion from the French Revolution, [End Page 1] re-absorption into the British Empire, and scalping-parties from the natives, Americans also faced internal revolutions, such as the Whiskey Revolt and Shays' Rebellion, which Tyler claimed to have played a role in ending (Tanselle 19-23). In the years leading up to and following the oppressive Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the American experiment seemed at any moment to come undone, especially along the growing fault-line of slavery. It was in this divisive atmosphere that Barbary-captive narratives, whether factual or fictional (like Tyler's), seized the public imagination like no other subject, supplying a badly needed political cohesion. Indeed, public outcry over Muslim raiders' repeated snatching of American seamen led eventually to the Tripolitan expedition of 1801-05, America's first war against terrorism and an event that catapulted it into the first ranks of global naval powers. Tyler's tale of a young man who grows up during the War of Independence only to become enslaved on Africa's northern coast, published as the "true" story of one Updike Underhill, has been read quite rightly as trading on Americans' concern for their countrymen's distant sufferings. 4 In its examination of its audience's unifying interest in viewing such spectacle, however, the novel also explores the consequences of philosophy's and early science's own fascination with distanced seeing, one that has had an inestimable impact on American culture. Just exactly how early science's techniques of "ocular demonstration" helped shape modern Anglophone society has been the subject of continuing fruitful exchanges between the history of science and literary studies. John Barrell has shown, for example, how the seventeenth-century drive for an "equal, wide survey" of England's population resulted not merely in censuses or art conceived from a "prospect view," but a ruling class that deemed this commanding perspective its political birthright. Likewise, Mary Poovey has traced the way in which the "surveillance system" of double-entry bookkeeping contributed to a British political economy in which an ethical or theological conception of truth and value slowly gave way to an episto-factual one, which subsequent histories have identified as inherently expansionist. 5 Further studies have suggested that the creation of a spectatorial subjectivity helped develop an circum-Atlantic bourgeoisie trained in "a universal yet disinterested sympathy" (Baucom 207). According to such a formulation, repeated investment in images of suffering others in sentimental literature as well as visual and...

Connecting the President and the People: Washington's Neutrality, Genet's Challenge, and Hamilton's Fight for Public Support

As the French Revolution intensified with the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793, so did the American public's interest in foreign affairs. Since President George Washington seized the initiative in foreign affairs (rather than Congress, as was expected by many at the time), the executive became the focal point of the developing relationship between the American public and the newly established federal government. The events centered on the Washington administration and the French Minister, Edmond Genet, placed the office of president of the United States squarely at the intersection of foreign affairs and popular politics. By focusing on the political activity that swirled around President George Washington's controversial proclamation of neutrality, this essay examines how Federalists, especially the administration's own Alexander Hamilton, tried to shape the public's understanding of the proclamation. When Washington thrust his administration into the burgeoning foreign crisis, the president put himself and the executive office at the center of the public debate. By looking at newspaper essays, community resolutions, presidential replies, and the Gideon Henfield trial and verdict, this essay argues that the Washington administration experienced the power of public opinion as an advantageous political force as well as an obstacle to its policy of neutrality. Washington's proclamation of neutrality, which injected executive authority into the realm of foreign affairs at a time when the American public was intensely interested in foreign events, contributed to the developing relationship between the American people and the newly established executive office.

"To Preserve African Slavery": The Secession Commissioners to Texas, 1861

"To Preserve African Slavery":The Secession Commissioners to Texas, 1861 Matthew K. Hamilton (bio) During the secession crisis in late 1860 and early 1861, five states of the lower South appointed commissioners to travel to the other slave states with the purpose of swaying their fellow Southerners to leave the Union and form a Southern Confederacy. Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana appointed a total of fifty-five commissioners who journeyed to the farthest reaches of the South between December 1860 and April 1861. However, they were not, for the most part, the famous names of the 1860-61 secessionist movement. Indeed, outside of their home states they were rather obscure figures. Most of the commissioners were lawyers, judges, doctors, newspaper editors, farmers, and planters. The vast majority of them had modest reputations as politicians, and most were recognized for possessing above average oratorical skills. These attributes qualified them for their role as secession commissioners.1 Once the commissioners arrived in the states they were assigned to visit, most addressed the state legislatures or conventions that would vote on secession. They delivered speeches to large crowds whenever possible and wrote letters to governors and state legislators. The commissioners' letters, speeches, and actions provide an unparalleled insight into the mind-set of the secessionist movement during the critical weeks before the Civil War. Their message was clear, their resolve immense. When they set out to [End Page 355] their assigned states in late 1860 and early 1861, they carried with them the seeds of secession, the formation of a new Southern Confederacy, and ultimately civil war. Despite the important role that the secession commissioners were expected to play during the secession crisis of 1860-61, little has been written about them. Indeed, only two major scholarly works have been produced. In 1963 Durward Long described the labors of Alabama's commissioners. He concluded, among other things, that the efforts of Alabama's commissioners were significant because they provided meaningful consultation between the slave states during the secession crisis. As a result, Alabama sensed that it would not be alone in seceding from the Union and could count on allies in the event of coercion by the new administration in Washington. Thus, Long described an important dimension to the commissioners' message. The nationalistic qualities of the commissioners' actions and speeches, and their desire to build a consensus among the slave states formed an essential element of their missions.2 The only other significant scholarly study on the commissioners is Charles B. Dew's Apostles of Disunion. Larger in scope than Long's treatment, Dew's account included the actions, letters, and speeches of forty-one of the fifty-five men who served as commissioners. He concluded that the commissioners represented a belief that the "racial fate of their region was hanging in the balance in the wake of Lincoln's election." To Dew, secession and the formation of a Southern Confederacy were a means by which the slave states could maintain white supremacy in the American South.3 Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana all sent commissioners to Texas, but the story of their visits remains largely untold. James Martin Calhoun, the commissioner sent by Alabama was given only slight mention by Durward Long, and although Dew covered forty-one of the fifty-five commissioners, he examined only a single commissioner to Texas, John McQueen from South Carolina.4 This study will identify all four of the secession commissioners who came to Texas in early 1861 and describe their contact with leaders in the Lone Star State. The purpose is not to argue that these emissaries for secession had a major role in convincing Texas to leave the Union because evidence indicates that sentiment in favor of disunion controlled the Lone Star State well before they arrived. Instead, the focus of this study is an analysis of the arguments utilized by the commissioners as they sought to accomplish their mission to Texas. Did they attempt to foster [End Page 356] a nascent sense of Confederate nationalism by arguing that Texas would be a key part of a new Southern nation, or did they emphasize the need for secession in order to...

George Washington and Executive Power

This paper examines current debates over the scope of presidential power through the lens of the Washington administration. We tend to treat Washington’s decisions with an air of inevitability, but the constitutional text left more questions about the executive unanswered than answered.Washington filled these gaps with a number of foundational decisions - several on a par with those made during the writing and ratification of the Constitution itself. He was a republican before he was a Federalist, but ultimately Washington favored an energetic, independent executive, even at the cost of political harmony. He centralized decision-making in his office, so that there would be no confusion about his responsibility and accountability. He took the initiative in enforcing the law and followed his own interpretation of the Constitution. He managed diplomatic relations with other countries and set the nation’s foreign policy. At the end of his two terms, the Presidency looked much like the one described in The Federalist Papers. None of this was foreordained. Washington could have chosen to mimic a parliamentary system or a balanced government with executive branch officials drawn from an aristocratic social class. He could have considered the Presidency as Congress’s clerk, committing himself solely to carrying out legislative directions. He might even have thought of himself as the servant of the states. But instead he read his constitutional powers broadly to lead the nation through its first growing pains; restore the country’s finances; keep the nation out of a dangerous European war; open the West to American expansion; and see the Constitution through the appearance of the first political parties.

Economic thought and U.S. climate change policy

The United States, once a world leader in addressing international environmental challenges, became a vigorous opponent of action on climate change over the past two decades, repudiating regulation and promoting only ineffectual voluntary actions to meet a growing global threat. Why has the United States failed so utterly to address the most pressing environmental issue of the age? This book argues that the failure arose from an unyielding ideological stance that embraced free markets and viewed government action as anathema. The most notorious result of this hands-off approach was the financial meltdown of late 2008; but strict reliance on free markets also hobbled government policymakers' response to the challenge of global warming. This book explores the relationship between free-market fundamentalism and U.S. inaction on climate change and offers recommendations for new approaches that can lead to effective climate-change policy and improve enviromental, health, and safety policies in general. After describing the evolution of U.S. climate change policy and the influence of neoliberal economic thought, the book takes up the question of what ideas might supersede the neoliberal reliance on cost-benefit analysis, overly broad market-based mechanisms, and rejection of precautionary approaches and environmental justice concerns. With a new administration in Washington, the need for a new policy framework is acute; this book supplies a timely guide to the kinds of policies that are most promising.