ABSTRACT
The establishment of the American federal system was, at one and the same time, a new political invention and a reasonable extension of an old political principle; a considerable change in the American status quo and a step fully consonant with the particular political genius of the American people. Partly because of their experiences with the model before them and partly because of the theoretical principles they had derived from the philosophic traditions surrounding them, the American people rejected the notions of the general will and the organic state common among their European contemporaries. Instead, they built their constitutions and institutions on the covenant principle, a very different conception of the political order. 1
