Chapter 3 reveals how violent individuals and a violent state are structured in the Constitution. Here, violent, White self-determination (the right of White individuals to overthrow government) and liberalism (the systemic differences central to a liberal state) mix with republicanism (a decentralization of authority that privileges violent acts of citizens, a group most often defined as propertied, White men). In Article IV, Section 4, the Second Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment, this chapter reveals the key formulations and tensions of American violence.

This chapter examines the major rebellions that occurred in Spanish America during the era of North American colonial protest and rebellion against British policies and government. It focuses on the revolt of the city of Quito in 1765, the Andean rebellions started by Tupac Amaru in 1780, and the 1781 Comunero rebellion in New Granada, set in the context of Spanish administrative and fiscal reforms under Charles III and Spanish geopolitical conflict with Britain between the Seven Years’ War and the American War of independence. The principal purpose here is to enquire into the origins of the rebellions, their organization and social composition, and the political attitudes and ideas of their participants. In addition to comparing the Spanish American rebellions in terms of their causes, political cultures and political impacts, it also reflects on their contemporaneous relationship to the American Revolution and their place in the wider challenge to European monarchies during the Age of Revolution.

The American federal union was created in 1781 by the Articles of Confederation. Designed to protect the independence and promote the interests of the member-states, it concentrated power over international matters and war in a central government. Although the Articles granted extensive powers to a congress of states, their implementation was left to the state governments. This arrangement proved dysfunctional and by early 1787, the future of the union was in doubt. The Constitution challenged neither the aims nor the purposes of the American union. Instead, it radically reformed its structure. It set up a central government with a legislative, executive and judicial branch and the right to legislate directly on the individual citizens of the American states. By allowing the federal government to operate independently of the states, the problem of the non-implementation of congressional decisions was overcome. Only with the adoption of the Constitution did the American union acquire national cohesion and a central government with the capacity to act with determination and energy against foreign powers and stateless peoples on the North American continent.

Chapter 6 deals with the question of American self-understanding after the Declaration of Independence—were they one people or many peoples?—and the framing of the state constitutions. The first part of the chapter offers substantial excerpts from the first constitutions of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts as well as critical examinations of these documents by contemporaries, including passages from Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia and Benjamin Rush’s Observations on the Present Government of Pennsylvania. The selections reveal two fundamental problems to be decided by the state constitutional conventions: who was qualified to write a constitution and who should approve and ratify it—the people at large or the natural aristocracy? The second part of the chapter presents the Articles of Confederation and excerpts from related writings. The same confrontation between the principle of corporate representation and the principle of numerical majorities played out in the debates on the Articles of Confederation as delegates disagreed whether to emphasize the union or the states.

John Dickinson (1732–1809) was a Founder of the United States whose jurisprudence was greatly influenced by Quakerism. Although he never joined the Religious Society of Friends, Dickinson adopted the basic tenets of their religion, particularly the belief in the Light of Christ in the conscience, which caused them to consider all people spiritually equal, regardless of gender, race, or socio-economic status. The strong and outspoken Quaker women in Dickinson’s life—his mother, wife, daughters, and a range of other female friends and relatives—influenced him to advocate for women in his legal practice and in his work to found the nation. Among the leading Founders, Dickinson was the only one to press for women’s rights, making him an early feminist.