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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Theories of the nature of the political community vary with conditions. Just as political pluralism was a phase of the late mellowness of liberalism, so the organic theory of the state is suited for more heroic moments. When integral nationalism was discovered in the United States after the defeat of the South, it was not inappropriate that organic theories should have been supported in order to explain the place of the American nation in history. Nor can it be surprising that today some of the leaders of the United States are looking at the nation as a kind of social organism.
If one reads with attention the words of President Lincoln during the early days of the Civil War, it can be seen that the Union was more than just a voluntary association of political communities. The states had their being within the Union, and the Union itself had given birth to the states. Even the history of Texas and its relation to the Union did not impress Lincoln as simply consensual, for if there was consent it was all on the side of Texas. Whatever liberty and authority the states possessed they derived from the Union, and not from any original powers of their own. When the Union became a symbol of organicity in the mind of the North, the earlier individualistic theory of the state was remote enough. The social contract, the consent of all to government, was suitable in the American Revolution, since protest was being made against the specific, arbitrary actions of the British government, animated it would seem by a total conception of Empire. To Lincoln, states, like individuals, were a part of the Union, and the Union might be broken neither by citizens nor by states.
1 See special session message, July 4, 1861.
2 See, in general, Weinberg, Albert K., Manifest Destiny; A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History (1935).Google Scholar
3 See Brownson, O. A., The American Republic (1866)Google Scholar; Hurd, John C., The Theory of Our National Existence (1881)Google Scholar, and The Union State (1890); Mulford, Elisha, The Nation (1870)Google Scholar; Cook, Thomas I. and Leavelle, Arnaud B., “Orestes A. Brownson's ‘The American Republic,’” Review of Politics, Vol. 4, pp. 77 ff. (1942).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 See, in general, Gabriel, Ralph H., The Course of American Democratic Thought (1940).Google Scholar
5 See Lieber, Francis, Political Ethics (1838–1839)Google Scholar, and Civil Liberty and Self-Government (1853); Burgess, John W., Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law (1890).Google Scholar
6 See The Works of John C. Calhoun, ed. by Crallé, R. K. (6 vols., 1853), Vol. I.Google Scholar
7 See Coker, Francis W., Organismic Theories of the State (Columbia University Studies, Vol. XXXVIII, 1910).Google Scholar
8 Cf. McGovern, William M., From Luther to Hitler (1941).Google Scholar
9 “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” International Conciliation, No. 306 (1935).
10 Reflections on the French Revolution, and Other Essays (Everyman's Library, 1910), p. 93.
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