6
Such a real integration has undoubtedly occurred in American history. In the decade before 1789 most men, it seems, felt that their state and their community were real, but that the confederation of states was unreal. The idea of their state, its flag, its most conspicuous leaders, or whatever it was that represented Massachusetts, or Virginia, were genuine symbols. That is to say, they were fed by actual experiences from childhood, occupation, residence, and the like. The span of men's experience had rarely traversed the imaginary boundaries of their states. The word Virginian was related to pretty nearly everything that most Virginians had ever known or felt. It was the most extensive political idea which had genuine contact with their experience.
Their experience, not their needs. For their needs arose out of their real environment, which in those days was at least as large as the thirteen colonies. They needed a common defense. They needed a financial and economic regime as extensive as the Confederation. But as long as the pseudo-environment of the state encompassed them, the state symbols exhausted their political interest. An interstate idea, like the Confederation, represented a powerless abstraction. It was an omnibus, rather than a symbol, and the harmony among divergent groups, which the omnibus creates, is transient.
I have said that the idea of confederation was a powerless abstraction. Yet the need of unity existed in the decade before the Constitution was adopted. The need existed, in the sense that affairs were askew unless the need of unity was taken into account. Gradually certain classes in each colony began to break through the state experience. Their personal interests led across the state lines to interstate experiences, and gradually there was constructed in their minds a picture of the American environment which was truly national in scope. For them the idea of federation became a true symbol, and ceased to be an omnibus. The most imaginative of these men was Alexander Hamilton. It happened that he had no primitive attachment to any one state, for he was born in the West Indies, and had, from the very beginning of his active life, been associated with the common interests of all the states. Thus to most men of the time the question of whether the capital should be in Virginia or in Philadelphia was of enormous importance, because they were locally minded. To Hamilton this question was of no emotional consequence; what he wanted was the assumption of the state debts because they would further nationalize the proposed union. So he gladly traded the site of the capitol for two necessary votes from men who represented the Potomac district. To Hamilton the Union was a symbol that represented all his interests and his whole experience; to White and Lee from the Potomac, the symbol of their province was the highest political entity they served, and they served it though they hated to pay the price. They agreed, says Jefferson, to change their votes, "White with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive." [Footnote: Works, Vol. IX, p. 87. Cited by Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, p. 172.]
In the crystallizing of a common will, there is always an Alexander
Hamilton at work.
CHAPTER XIV
YES OR NO
1
Symbols are often so useful and so mysteriously powerful that the word itself exhales a magical glamor. In thinking about symbols it is tempting to treat them as if they possessed independent energy. Yet no end of symbols which once provoked ecstasy have quite ceased to affect anybody. The museums and the books of folklore are full of dead emblems and incantations, since there is no power in the symbol, except that which it acquires by association in the human mind. The symbols that have lost their power, and the symbols incessantly suggested which fail to take root, remind us that if we were patient enough to study in detail the circulation of a symbol, we should behold an entirely secular history.
In the Hughes campaign speech, in the Fourteen Points, in Hamilton's project, symbols are employed. But they are employed by somebody at a particular moment. The words themselves do not crystallize random feeling. The words must be spoken by people who are strategically placed, and they must be spoken at the opportune moment. Otherwise they are mere wind. The symbols must be earmarked. For in themselves they mean nothing, and the choice of possible symbols is always so great that we should, like the donkey who stood equidistant between two bales of hay, perish from sheer indecision among the symbols that compete for our attention.