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7

STRESS ON NATIONAL POWER:
THE HAMILTONIANS

EVEN BEFORE SUCCESSFUL TERMINATION OF THE REVO-
lution, America was faced with two alternatives: to patch up
and confirm a league of states, individually strong but col-
lectively weak, or attempt to set in motion a counter tendency,
making for centralized, coercive power essential, as Hamilton
believed, to a Great Republic. In the Convention, the New
Yorker had dramatized the issue, telling the delegates that
they were called upon to decide the fate of republican gov-
ernment. If they did not provide "due stability and wisdom
it would be disgraced and lost to mankind forever." Hamilton
threw down this caveat after months of debate, maneuvers,
stratagems, and compromise. "The Constitution," as John
Quincy Adams truly said, "had been extorted from the grind-
ing necessity of a reluctant nation." 1 Establishment of the

____________________
1 John Quincy Adams, The Jubilee of the Constitution; A Discourse
Delivered at the Request of the New York Historical Society, April 30,
1839 ( New York: Samuel Colman, 1839), p. 55.

-167-

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Book Title: In Quest of Freedom: American Political Thought and Practice. Contributors: Alpheus Thomas Mason McCormick - author, Richard H. Leach - author. Publisher: Prentice Hall. Place of Publication: Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Publication Year: 1959. Page Number: 167.
    
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