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 An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB 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 electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. 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