#2-5: Bigger is better

These four essays contend that America is best when it is large and strong – and ruled by a powerful government. John Jay focuses on foreign policy – the area where the bigger is better argument is most compelling. A nation that can defend its borders is better off than a nation that is vulnerable to attack.

This is certainly true. Americans are fortunate to live in a country that is economically and socially and militarily strong. And it is strong because it is large and united.

The United States in 1787 were weak and unproven. The country was surrounded by threats and outright enemies. England still resented American independence. (The great English essayist Samuel Johnson had written “Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be grateful for anything we given them short of hanging.”) England would provoke another war with America 25 years later. France supported the US in the revolution, partly because French philosophy had been instrumental in American revolutionary thought, and partly because America was a nuisance to France’s enemy, England. Nevertheless, the US came close to war with France within 20 years, too.

To the west of the 13 states lay vast wilderness inhabited by a complex array of formidable Indian nations. Only five years from the time Jay was writing this, the Shawnee and Miami nations would destroy an American army in a battle on the banks of the Wabash River -- the worst military defeat in proportional terms that America’s military would ever suffer. This great battle remembered as “Sinclair’s Defeat” or as “The Battle of A Thousand Slain,” was such an embarrassment that George Washington refused requests from Congress to report what happened.

At the time of the Federalist Papers, serious threats loomed, and the promise of peace through strength was appealing.

And yet there were some who thought tying all the states together would make each one vulnerable for the problems of every other one. Jay argued that America was already one geographic and culture unit. 

It has often given me pleasure to observe that independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, widespreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions, and watered it with innumerable streams, for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids, and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities.

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people--a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

 It is hardly right to say the country was connected. The difficulty of travel in the 1780s is well known. Rivers flowing toward the Atlantic coastline were not highways for easy communication. They were obstacles to anyone traveling north to south. Maryland, Virginia and most other southern and mid Atlantic states were bound in by formidable mountains. The “succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders” probably refers to the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence River – which were all far beyond the settled areas in 1787.

But the second paragraph cited above holds the rifest nonsense. Not one single part of it is true. Americans in 1787 did not share a language or a religion or common ancestors. And the degree to which they shared any principles of government was strained to the breaking point during the just concluded constitutional convention.  

Jay recognizes early in #2 that many people believed the nation would be better off splitting into smaller and more manageable units:

It has until lately been a received and uncontradicted opinion that the prosperity of the people of America depended on their continuing firmly united, and the wishes, prayers, and efforts of our best and wisest citizens have been constantly directed to that object. But politicians now appear, who insist that this opinion is erroneous, and that instead of looking for safety and happiness in union, we ought to seek it in a division of the States into distinct confederacies or sovereignties.

 He said the best for each state was the strength of all, and gave several reasons:

The national government would inevitable draw the smartest and most moral men into its ranks, so a strong national government would ensure that important decisions would be decided by the wisest men.

Foreign complications are likely to fall on one or two states more heavily than the rest, so having a strong national Congress filled with people from all over would mitigate the hotheads in the most affected states: “[T]he national government, not being affected by those local circumstances, will neither be induced to commit the wrong themselves, nor want power or inclination to prevent or punish its commission by others.”

A large America with diverse industrial and agricultural abilities would be less vulnerable to pressures from other nations in terms of trade, shipping fees, etc.

In the last extreme, if America should go to war, a very large, very populous, and very powerful America has the best chance of winning.

 Discuss:

• Is it difficult for Americans living in the 21st Century to understand the real dangers the country was in at the time the Constitution was adopted?

• Do you agree with Jay’s “bigger is better” argument? Are there any disadvantages to being very large and powerful?