Vindicating the Commercial Republic: The Federalist on Union, Enterprise, and War

430 Pages·2018·1.461 MB·English

by  Anthony A Peacock

Vindicating
the Commercial Republic

Vindicating
the Commercial Republic
The Federalist on Union,
Enterprise, and War
Anthony A. Peacock
LEXINGTON BOOKS
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books
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Copyright © 2018 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Is Available
ISBN 978-1-4985-5347-6 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4985-5348-3 (electronic)
∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
To Leon Craig and Barry Cooper
For setting me on that longer (and far more interesting) way

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Need to Vindicate the American Commercial
Republic 1
1 The Foundations in Principle of The Federalist’s
Constitutionalism 45
2 Natural Rights and a New Commercial Republican Theory 83
3 The Spirited Nature of Commercial Republics 111
4 Taming the Commercial Republic 129
5 Thucydides and The Federalist 165
6 The Virtue of Enterprise 191
7 Federalists 11–14 and the Spirit of Enterprise 219
8 Enterprise and the High Politics of American Constitutionalism 255
9 War and the Impossibility of an Insularity Doctrine 279
10 Constitutional Powers and The Federalist’s High-Toned Politics 311
Conclusion: The Commercial Republic and the American Way of War 345
Bibliography 389
Index 403
Index to Federalist Numbers 415
About the Author 419
vii

Acknowledgments
This book is the result of many years study of The Federalist and of courses
I have taught on The Federalist and Thucydides at Utah State University. I
am grateful to the students who have taken those courses over the years and
who contributed to the discussion of many of the issues covered in this book.
A number of students I have had at USU have also been research assistants
who have assisted me with research for this project as well as others. I would
like to thank Jeff Hastings, Eddy Morris, Barrett Anderson, Rees Empey,
and Ted Peterson for their tireless efforts in this regard. I would also like
to thank Stacey Kelly, Emily Marler, and Destry Wride for their assistance
in formatting the text and helping put together the bibliography and index
for the book. In addition, I would like to thank Stacey and Shelly Schiess
for maintaining the political science office while I worked on this book and
attempted simultaneously to fulfill my duties as department head. The Ear-
hart Foundation provided me a generous financial grant to conduct the early
research and writing of this book. My thanks to Earhart and to Ingrid Gregg
and Monty Brown in particular. Many scholars and others have assisted me
in different ways with this book. This is only a partial list, and I apologize
to anyone I have unduly left out here, but I am particularly grateful to Peter
McNamara, Carol McNamara, Brad Watson, Mary Beth McConahey, R. J.
Pestritto, Glenn Moots, Matt Spalding, Joe Postell, Charles Kesler, David
Azerrad, Arthur Milikh, Therese Pennefather, Jon Rodeback, Hans Eicholz,
Karl Walling, Mack Owens, Steve Knott, Melanie Marlowe, Tom Karako,
Sue Collins, Christine Dunn Henderson, Peter Mentzel, Ivan Eland, Doug
Bandow, Henry Olsen, Kim Dennis, Roger Ream, Bert Smith, Kathy Smith,
Doug McGregor, Fred Fransen, Angelika Quitschke, and Pamela Edwards.
My sincere thanks are also due to Joseph Parry, Emily Roderick, Mad-
humitha Koduvalli, Brianna Westervelt, and Vaishnavi Ganesh of Lexington
ix