The Nation (P-List) bickering itself into fragments

[gary webb]

"This Christmastide of 1786, with the War settl'd and the Nation bickering
itself into fragments...'

I've taken this as foreshadowing of the coming Constitutional Convention
which would take place in 1787 in Philadelphia. It also sheds some light on
the state of affairs in Philadelphia, and most importantly, the state of
affairs of Pennsylvania. As a reference, and a good source of context, I've
read Gordon S Wood's  *The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. *

After the Declaration of Independence (in where else, but Philly),
Legislatures in the former colonies went about forming their State
Constitutions. The most interesting was Pennsylvania's.

In Akhil Amar's *America's Constitution: A Biography* (2005):

"Most democratic of all were the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 and the
New York Constitution of 1777, the only two Revolution-era documents
promising to allocate all future legislative seats solely on the basis of
population, as measured by periodic enumerations. Pennsylvania's
constitution announced that "representation in proportion to the number of
taxable inhabitants is the only principle which can at all times secure
liberty, and make the voice of of a majority of the people the law of the
land; therefore the general assembly" was obliged to conduct a septennial
census and reallocate assembly seats "in proportion to the number of
taxables." "

Gordon S Wood describes the Constitution making process, in the general
sense as applied to all legislatures of the Declaration: "... the
Revolution became something more than a move for home rule. In 1776 and
more intensely in the coming years in different times and places, and in
varying degrees it broadened into a struggle among Americans themselves for
the fruits of Independence, becoming in truth a multifaceted affair, with
layers below layers, in which men were viewed from very opposite directions
on the political and social scale. (pg.83)"

Of the Pennsylvania Constitution he writes: "The Constitution was radical;
the ideology extreme; and the political situation revolutionary. Yet what
happened in Pennsylvania was only an extension and exaggeration of what was
taking place elsewhere in America. Because of the peculiar abruptness of
its internal revolution, Pennsylvania tended to telescope into several
months time changes in ideas that in other states often took years to work
out and became in effect a laboratory for the developing of lines of
radical Whig thought that elsewhere in 1776 remained generally rudimentary
and diffuse. In the  Pennsylvania press of 1776 the typical Whig outbursts
against Tories and Crown were overshadowed by expressions of parvenu
resentment and social hostility. (pg. 85)"

"Equality became the great rallying cry of the Pennsylvania radicals in the
spring and summer of 1776. The former rulers, it was charged were "a
minority of rich men," a few "men of fortune,"  an "aristocratical junto"
who had always strained every nerve "to make the common and middle class of
people their beasts of burden" Such aristocrats derived "no right to power
from their wealth." The Revolution against Britain was on behalf of the
people. And who were the people in America, but the ordinary farmers and
mechanics? (ibid.)"

It's interesting to not that by the time of the Christmastide of 1786 these
egalitarian winds were slowly dissolving into what became the
Constitutional Convention of 1787. And the factions which resented the 1776
State constitutions were gaining ground in the State. But they did leave
their mark and the 1787 Federal Constitution, in the apportionment of the
House.

I doubt that Pynchon had Constitutions in mind particularly when speaking
of the "fragments,"  but those fragments were certainly metastasizing in
the city of Philadelphia, the state of Pennsylvania, and in the Country at
large.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20171221/d042dbb2/attachment.html>