This book examines what 'republicanism' meant to the Americans who drafted and ratified the United States Constitution, guaranteeing a 'republican form of government' to every state in the Union. M.N.S.Sellers compares the writings and speeches of the founders with the authors they read and imitated to identify the central tenets of American republicanism, and to demonstrate that American republican though directly reflected classical models, rather than a mediating tradition of English or continental political theory.

Inhalt

Preface - PART 1: REPUBLICAN IMAGES - Introduction - Republican Pseudonyms - The Iconography of the American Revolution - North American Classicism - Public Debate at the Time of the Constitutional Convention - Republican Images - PART 2: THE ROMAN EXAMPLE - The Influence of John Adams - The Pennsylvania Republicans - Polybius and the Roman Constitution - The English and American Constitutions - The United States Constitution - The Roman Example - PART 3: REPUBLICAN NARRATIVES - Livy's Empire of Laws - Plutarch's Lives - Tacitus and Liberty - Sallust and Corruption - Cicero's Res Publica - Republican Narratives - PART 4: ENGLISH COMMONWEALTHS - Thomas Gordon's Republicanism - 'Cato' and Virtue - Algernon Sidney and the People - James Harrington and the Senate - John Locke and the United States Constitution - English Commonwealths - PART 5: AMERICAN REPUBLICANS - The Antifederalists - Montesquieu's Republics - James Wilson's Republicanism - The State Ratifying Conventions - Publius as a Republican - American Republicans - PART 6: RES PUBLICA RESTITUTA - American Republicanism - End-Notes - Concise Bibliography - Index