(Benjamin Franklin's reported response to a question asked of him as the delegates were leaving Independence Hall, having finalized the draft of a new American Constitution in 1787)

It is generally understood today that the term "American government" applies to some kind of self-standing institution, also referred to as the "state,"¹ assigned the powers to guide or direct Americans toward particular political goals. Supposedly this institution, the government or state, functions according to a set of basic operational rules (the Constitution and its many legal spinoffs) which empower and guide, but also restrict, the state in its operations.

In a typical class on American government it is this institution and its operations that come under study.  Quite in line with the Enlightenment's understanding of the dynamics of life, the American government is treated as if it were some kind of great machine (thus the talk of the "machinery of government") that operates rather mechanically in providing guidance for the country.  The structure and function of each of the various parts of the governmental machine are brought under careful study: Congress, the presidency, the courts, the bureaucracy, the political parties, the elections that fill the various positions or offices that run this government.  The goal is to bring into focus the end products or policies and programs that this governmental machinery produces in order to make a better America: road-building programs, assistance to farmers, the regulation of the value of the nation's currency, the policing of criminals, the collection of taxes to run the government, the defense of the nation's borders, etc.

This approach to the study of governmental mechanics is considered to be political science.  Universities even offer a special degree to those who take up the advanced study of how such a governmental institution should be managed: the master's degree in public administration (the MPA).  It's all very logical, all very mechanical, and ideally all very manageable from the heights of political power.

However, this study takes a very different approach to the idea of government and its mechanics.  What this study is founded on is the central idea that government is that which governs (of course!).  And what governs a society is largely the inner core of a people's sense of purpose, their sense of right and wrong, their sense of why it is important to work together as a people.  A public institution such as the state is helpful to a people in symbolizing or clarifying these rather intangible intellectual, moral and spiritual ideas which govern their thoughts and actions.  It is there also to set boundaries on human behavior when such moral discipline finds itself lacking in the hearts of certain individuals, or even whole communities.

But ultimately no mechanical institutions of state that govern the common folk from above can take the place of what the people, by their own training, habit, inclinations or loyalties can do on their own.  For truly that which governs best is that which governs the hearts of a people.

It is important to note why this author does not follow the general trend of referring to the war they had just gone through as the "Revolutionary War" – but instead always refers to it as the "War of Independence."  America itself did not change in character.  In that all-important way America itself underwent no "revolution."  It simply fought to preserve the very political and social character that had been long-established in America, a political-social quality that Americans refused to give up to George III.  Certainly independence was achieved in this very bloody struggle.

But nothing "revolutionary" happened to the way America went about its usual social business as a result of the war!  It was simply moving forward on the basis of long-established political habits.  Nor did the Americans newly invent Constitutional government ... all the colonies having been run according to very precise legal principles outlined in their founding charters laid out a century and a half earlier (but updated as the need arose).  They planned to continue as independent "states" in exactly the same manner.  Thus upon their move to independence in 1776, each of the colonies had worked quickly to draft up new charters or state constitutions.  In short, such self-government was by no means a "revolutionary" development for Americans.  They were well-practiced in self-government according to well-established legal principles.

Furthermore, because of the tendency today of Americans to view their government as a set of mechanically operating public institutions governing the country from Washington, D.C., it is difficult to understand exactly the dynamic which directed the thoughts and actions of the Constitutional Framers back in 1787, as they attempted to put together a new political union.  What today is widely understood as government was not at all what they were attempting to put together.

What they were aiming for certainly was designed to be much stronger than the Confederation, the system under which the newly independent thirteen American states had at first been attempting to work together – but not succeeding very well in the effort since the end of their war against England in 1783.

Was this new thing simply a treaty of alliance among thirteen newly independent states?  Was it creating a new government?  Did it in fact set up a new national state to preside over the affairs of the thirteen newly independent states and their people?  What exactly was it?

The Framers termed it a republic.  We today think more in terms of the Framers having created a democracy.  They saw it as a federal union or alliance of thirteen independent states.  We see it today as the foundation for a federal state governing from Washington, D.C.  They could not see exactly what it might eventually become.  We today have difficulty in seeing what it was and what these wise Framers originally intended it to be.

Certainly the last thing the Framers wanted to do was to create an all-dominant state.  They had just gone through a long and brutal revolt against exactly that sort of institution: the monarchy of England.  At that time, European kings or monarchs viewed all things within their royal estate – all lands, and all people and buildings on these lands – as being their property, belonging to their estate, and therefore under their complete dominion.  People lived on their land or estate purely at the tolerance of the king, or so the kings claimed anyway.  If you did not like this arrangement you could leave, presuming there was anywhere else to go, the dangerous wilderness of America being about the only possibility at the time.

The Framers were very sensitive about the dangers of tyranny coming from a strong central state.  This concern was clearly laid out in their Declaration of Independence of 1776, which outlined one after another the many tyrannies that had developed of late under the English royal or monarchical state.  Subsequently many young men had died in the effort to preserve the freedom of life in America against such tyranny.  And the leaders of this revolt, which included many of those same men gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft a new constitution, had put on their heads the price of treason.  They all would have been executed by the English authorities if their revolt had failed.  They had so recently risked so much to preserve American liberties.  Thus they were not in a mood to give those same liberties away to an American version of the English state that they had just succeeded in getting the country out from under.

And yet they stood in grave danger of disunion and – if their new United States remained nothing more than a loose collection of very small, rather weak states – becoming easy prey for imperially ambitious European kings.  England might return in an attempt to recapture these states.  Even France or Spain might attempt something of the same nature if these thirteen newly independent states did not come up with some kind of stronger political union than this very weak confederacy they had been trying to operate under.

Thus they gathered in Philadelphia in the late spring of 1787 under Washington's rather silent leadership (a gathering which would take them into September to complete their work) to come up with a plan that would allow the various states (Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Georgia, etc.) to work together more closely ... and give their new political system more muscle to handle unexpected domestic problems as well.

The original thought was simply to revise the Articles of Confederation by strengthening the Continental Congress in its various legislative or law-making powers.  ut as they approached the scheduled gathering, a number of the delegates already realized that they needed to create an entirely new institution, one with enough authority to help them work together in some kind of closer harmony, yet with no more authority than absolutely necessary to fulfill that task.

Since the beginning of the revolt in the mid-1770s they had worked together as thirteen former colonies, now thirteen independent states, under some kind of sense of alliance.  They had coordinated their revolt in accordance with the Articles of Confederation, which served as their first joint constitution (put together in 1776-1777 and finally fully ratified in 1781).  The Articles and the Confederation had served them fairly well (though by no means perfectly) during the heat of battle against the English armies, supporting Washington's army (sometimes barely so!) and keeping them together in one mind and spirit during the dark days of the revolt.  Yet now that this danger had passed, they faced a new danger of splitting apart into a number of contending mini-states.

Indeed, the thirteen states had recently begun to actually compete against each other politically and economically.  They were putting up trade barriers to prevent the sale in their own states of the products of the other American states, in order to protect the production of their own farmers and manufacturers.  They were even beginning to send out their own diplomats to work separate commercial deals with foreign powers (such as France, Spain and even England) in competition with each other.

If they did not cease this competitive selfishness, they would soon find themselves not only deeply divided but also easily conquered.  In a condition of weakened disunity, they would most certainly provoke the lusts of power-hungry monarchs to return to America in a power grab designed to absorb these small, vulnerable states into their ever-expanding empires.

Yes, there was a treaty by which the English government had formally recognized the independence of the former American colonies, now fully sovereign states.  But also remember that to European monarchs those treaties had no enduring value. They were quickly broken by ambitious kings when any new opportunity to gain additional territory or regain formerly lost territory presented itself.  These American Patriots did not want their political divisions to offer those monarchs just that opportunity.  They needed to come together in a union that would protect the sovereignty of all these new American states.  They needed truly to be the United States of America.

¹The English word "state" comes from the French word état, which in French means both "estate" and "state." The king's property or estate was the heart of the typical European "state."