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The Influential Constitutional Writings of John Adams
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11406 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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11 / 1986 |
5,075 Words |
| Author
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Paul Edwards
Paul Edwards is professor of political science at Brigham
Young University. |
Most historians of the early national period agree that John Adams was "the most painstaking student of government, and the most widely read in political history of his generation," yet surprisingly little work has been devoted to his influence in framing the Constitution. Although Adams was absent from the Constitutional Convention, he was a prolific and influential political writer of the period. In his 1776 correspondence, Adams eagerly gave advice to southern statesmen who were reframing their state constitutions after the nullification of the colonial charters. One such letter, to George Wythe, was eventually published as the tract Thoughts on Government and was widely read and acclaimed as the most trenchant statement on republican government of the time. In 1779 he single handedly penned A Report of a Constitution or Form of Government for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which was adopted with very few changes as the Massachusetts constitution. Finally, immediately preceding the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he completed the first volume of what became a three-volume work entitled A Defense Of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. The conservative thinker Russell Kirk said of Adams' political writing, "this body of political thought exceeds, both in bulk and in penetration, any other work on government by an American." Indeed, in a thoughtful reading of the corpus of political documents of the period, the framing of the American Constitution makes sense only if we are willing to give a more generous consideration to the writings of John Adams.
Thoughts on Government
Months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted, it was clear to the Second Continental Congress that the colonial governments, as established in the colonial charters, were in need of restructuring. This determination was derived from the eighteenth-century republican theory that government is no longer credible when it begins to coerce its citizens. The Congress argued that the extant colonial charters did not sufficiently limit the coercive actions of the British, and therefore were no longer viable. Adams had argued as early as 1775, in his tract Novanglus, that because of the tyrannies of England many of the colonies were theoretically without the protection of legitimate government. Nevertheless, the idea of no government was intolerable to Adams, who had long felt that the American colonies, particularly those of New England, were directed by Providence, and were therefore examples to the world of how the Commonwealth was to operate socially and politically. So, during the discussion of official nullification of colonial charters by the Continental Congress, as the chartered governments
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