ABSTRACT

An American acceptance of social forces beyond any one nation's control had always been paired uneasily with a belief that perhaps the past did not necessarily bind the future. Such dualistic thinking should be expected from a people who combined classical and Christian assumptions because both offered mixed messages about the role played by human agency. Pennsylvania is often singled out as the state that most self-consciously democratized itself as it became part of a new federal union. Under its first state constitution, it eliminated the office of governor in favor of an executive council chosen by the assembly. Civil War eighty years later reminds us that the problems of sustaining an independent federal republic had not been solved with the adoption of a new constitution. And yet when the Confederate States of America wrote a constitution for their new nation they followed that of 1787 very closely.