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Introduction: Distrust and Alarm

Although "the valuable improvements made by the American [state] constitutions… cannot certainly be too much admired,… [a] prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements and [an] alarm for private rights… are echoed from one end of the continent to the other." 24 The situation is bad because of "the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administration." 25 The problem is a permanent one for representative governments. For example, the factional conflicts with which premodern republics were burdened are vividly described by Hamilton in the preceding essay, Federalist 9:

It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.… From the disorders that disfigure the annals of those republics the advocates of despotism have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty. They have decried all free government as inconsistent with the order of society, and have indulged themselves in malicious exaltation over its friends and partisans. 26

Faced with the violence of factional conflict, the people themselves can be persuaded by "the advocates of despotism" to choose a dictator for the sake of stability and the national unity. Despotic political men know this well. They can promote chaos—by instigating ethnic hatred and ruining the economy—precisely to preserve or restore their power against liberalizing forces. For example:

Since the spring of 1991… Yugoslavia has been consumed by a cruel, multisided war that has left hundreds hundreds of thousands dead, turned millions more into refugees, and horrified the entire world. Although often explained and even justified in terms of ethnicity and the historical and cultural legacies of the Balkans, the war has in fact been part of a purposeful and rational strategy planned and carried out by the minority of political actors in Serbia who were the most threatened by democratizing and liberalizing currents within the Serbian Communist party.… This coalition used the rhetoric of ethnicity and nationalism to provoke violent conflict along ethnic lines.… It thus explicitly sought to discredit market-based economic reform and liberalizing political reform as "anti-Serbian." 27

Madison defines a faction in terms of passions and interests "adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the comunity." 28 Here "passion" means, on the one hand, powerful attachments, and, on the other, anger and hatred that produce violent conflict. "Interest" means, in the first place, material interest, in money, privileges and possessions. We observe that a national minority can be a local majority, and thus a national majority can be a local minority, for example, Serbs in Kosovo. The problem remains the same, namely, the potential for violent conflict.

The methods of treatment are two: removing the causes of faction, and controlling its effects. It will turn out that the causes of faction prevent its removal from free societies. Madison's account of the causes of faction is thus of great importance; it entails a compact but remarkably general theory of human nature and political life. The account of controlling the effects of faction leads to the problem of majority faction. From these two accounts results the concept of the extended commercial republic with its "diversity of parties and interests" for which Federalist 10 is famous.

Human Nature and the Causes of Faction

There are two methods of removing the causes of faction: by destroying liberty; and by giving to all citizens "the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests." The destruction of liberty is immediately excluded, for the cure would be worse than the disease.

The sixth paragraph of Federalist 10 begins Madison's account of human nature and the causes of faction. The argument is fundamental to Madison's understanding of moderate politics. It reappears explicitly in Federalist 48-51 on the importance of checks and balances in securing the separation of powers. Thus the American concept of separation of powers cannot be understood independently of the reasoning of Federalist 10.

Can the opinions, passions, and interests of each and every citizen be made the same? Can there be unanimity of belief and feeling, and unity of interest in a human society, as there is, say, in a beehive? We doubt it very much. Madison grounds our doubt in short but powerful arguments from certain factors ubiquitous in our own experience. In the first argument, the imperfection of human reason guarantees that, in any society with freedom of speech, there will be a diversity of opinions on one and the same issue. Self-love, specifically, the desire to be first in the eyes of others, is a powerful human motive. Fallible reason and self-love can influence each other so that we become passionately attached to fallible opinions. 29 Passionate attachment to opposed opinions produces conflict among men. This is the source of passionately opinionated factions, one of four types of faction explicated in Federalist 10.

In the next argument, the differences in the capacities, or, as Madison calls them, "faculties," of individuals to acquire property divide society into groups and classes with opposed interests. Madison states that the first objective of free government is to protect these different and unequal faculties for acquiring property. 30 Thus every individual should be able to exercise his or her own capacities to the greatest extent, consistent with the equal right of others to do the same and with the common good. The purpose of government is thus not, as it was for Aristotle, the perfection of men's faculties according to an objective moral hierarchy; it is not, in other words, the formation of character through the promotion of virtue or human excellence. 31 It is rather to delimit and secure a protected "space" around every individual, within which one is free to act as one chooses. 32 Therefore, law is limitative for the individual, not formative of the community. This is the defining mark of liberalism. A government that protects the freedom of individuals through a system of majority rule is thus a liberal democracy. Contrasted with the oppressions of dictatorship, the liberal principle is salvific. But it is clear that the defining purpose of liberal democracy—the protection of freedom—cannot be achieved if society is beset (1) with violent conflict between extremist factions or (2) with class conflict between rich and poor. What solution does Madison offer?

The fallibility of reason, the force and forms of human self-love, and the differences in the productive and acquisitive capacities of individuals are, for Madison, properties of human nature: "The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man." 33 Attempting to abolish these causes means a war against human nature, and thus a society of unhappy individuals. Madison's solution will consist not in removing the causes, but in controlling the effects of faction. But this solution depends fundamentally on the further analysis of faction. For different species of faction are "brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society." 34 There are (at least) four types of faction, of which we have been introduced to two, namely, passionately opinionated factions, and factions based on interest in property. From the further elaboration of these, two more types of faction will be explicated. We shall see that three of the resulting four types of faction are always destructive of the possibility of decent politics, because destructive of the productive and acquisitive faculties of large numbers of individuals. The fourth type of faction is milder. Since factions are inevitable in free society, Madison's strategy is to encourage the less destructive type, and to marginalize the others by the promotion of the right "circumstances of civil society."

What then are the four species of faction? Two of them are based on passion, the other two on material interest. The first we have seen above, and Madison now describes it in terms of a "zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice."35 Included here are religious and ideological fanaticism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and, in general, shared suspicions generated by conspiracy theories. The second type of faction is defined by "an attachment to different leaders… or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions." 36 The first type of faction is essentially related to opinion; the second type seems not to be based on opinion, but rather on intense loyalty to charismatic but potentially destructive leaders. Both, however, are united and actuated by the passions of love and hate, regardless of material interest. If they reach a high level of activity, these two species of faction are fatal: they have "divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good." 37 People with different zealous opinions and passionate attachments cannot be satisfied to agree to disagree, or to try to persuade each other through dialogue and argument. Such people are full of anger and want to persecute as an end in itself. 38

The Yugoslav war provides a paradigmatic example. Consider the following description by Cvijeto Job, a former Yugoslav ambassador, of how the war was prepared by destructive opinions that festered within society, opinions promoted by certain opportunistic intellectuals:

These were people older than I, [Communist] party members and former [Tito] partisans—and their words and reasoning reflected only all-consuming hate of other people—narcissistic and paranoid, defensive and aggressive. In Belgrade, Albanians of Kosovo were derided as "Siptars": "good boys" only when doing menial work, sleeping in cellars, eating bread and onions. But when they asserted themselves in their autonomous province and challenged Serbian rule, even liberal Serbian friends of ours started describing them in mindlessly contradictory stereotypes—stupid but well organized, lazy but thrifty, anti-state plotters financed by money earned abroad. Then came ludicrous, sinister ravings by "historians" about an eternal global anti-Serbian conspiracy that included Tito, the Vatican, Stalin, Germans, the CIA, Albanians, NATO, Islam, the U.S. Senate, Western news media. False "scientific" tracts proliferate: In Serbia, there are tracts describing Serbs as "the most ancient people"; in Croatia, solemn dissertations on "900 years of Croatian parliamentary life." Both peoples celebrate a rich medieval past as proof of their superior cultural standing. Some Slovenes try to hide the fact that their first university was only founded in 1918. Some Bosnians seek to legitimize Bosnia and Herzegovina's claim of independence by citing the "national church" of medieval Bogomil heretics. It is as if new nations and states cannot come into being without such lineage. These irrationalities are partly traceable to the fact that with only a few brief intervals, we Yugoslavs were constantly under foreign rule, denied nation-building processes. We were barely touched by the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and humanism, and always aggressively compensated for ethnic and national insecurity with a pathetic insistence on our separate preeminence. 39

Slavenka Drakulic describes the descent into war in terms of an opinion or idea of "national homogenization," first promulgated by writers, then exploited by demagogues:

You may not realize that it is the intellectuals, writers, and journalists who were the real avant-garde of the war.… I remember when it started, when Slovenian and Serbian writers began writing open letters to each other in the mid-eighties… about national literature as education.… The question was, of course, how much from Slovenian and from Serbian literature should be included in the national curriculum.… At that point, sides had already been drawn. The atmosphere was heating up. The Yugoslav Writers Association… held meetings. It was the beginning of the long way down to the bottom of the war. I am not saying that the writers caused the war or started it. I am saying that national homogenization, basically the cause of the war, began then and there, on the intellectual and cultural level. I have not even mentioned the declining economic conditions and the other social problems the country faced. Here, I am speaking of ideas. I am saying that the ideas about dividing the educational, literary territory, the territory of writers, started there, and there the idea of division has stayed ever since.… Then, the media split and the television audiences in each republic didn't have the faintest clue as to what the people were watching in the other republics.… This isolation was engineered on purpose, for propaganda; the less information, the more propaganda.… When Milosevic came into power, he did a very simple thing: he replaced all the key persons in the media. Then the center of power was in his camp; he was deliberating with his own people. It was a very old Bolshevik maneuver. And then the big game of openly blaming others, whoever they might be, could start. Of course, the name for it was nationalism. Perhaps that doesn't sound dangerous to you. But consider that this was a process that many faithful totalitarian minds had prepared for over six or seven years. They worked to legitimize national hatred. And they succeeded. If it doesn't sound dangerous enough, it certainly became dangerous, when Serbian writers and academics seriously embarked on outlining the blueprint for the new state, the greater Serbia. 40

There remain two types of faction based on material interest. They are distinguished from the factions based on passionate attachments to opinions and persons in that they oppress primarily as a means to preserve or acquire wealth, not as an end in itself. 41 In view of these distinctions, the four kinds of faction are:

Passion-based factions (that persecute as an end in itself):

(1) based on attachment to opinions
(2) based on attachment to persons

Interest-based factions (that oppress as a means to profit):

(3) related to amount of property
(4) related to type of property

The first species of faction based on interest (the third on the above list) arises from the difference between rich and poor, and is "the most common and durable source of factions.… Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society." 42 Rigid inequality destroys the right of those without property to use their faculties for acquiring it; rigid inequality thus undermines the first objective of government, and leads to class hate and class conflict. Aristotle describes this type of factional division and its psychological effects:

In all cities there are three parts…, the very wealthy, the very poor, and third, those in the middle between these. Since, however, it is agreed that what is moderate and middling is best, it is evident that in the case of the goods of fortune as well a middling possession is the best of all. For it is readiest to obey reason, while for one who is overly handsome, overly strong, overly well born, or overly wealthy—or the reverse of these things, overly poor, overly weak, or very lacking in honor—it is difficult to follow reason. The former sort tend to become arrogant and base on a grand scale, the latter malicious and base in petty ways; and acts of injustice are committed either through arrogance or through malice.… In addition, those who are preeminent in the goods of fortune—strength, wealth, friends, and the other things of this sort—neither wish to be ruled nor know how to be. This is something that marks them from the time they are children at home, for the effect of living in luxury is that they do not become habituated to being ruled even at school; but those who are excessively needy with respect to these things are too humble. So the ones do not know how to rule but only how to be ruled, and then only in the manner of rule by a master, and the others do not know how to be ruled by any sort of rule, but only to rule in the manner of a master. What comes into being, then, is not a city of free persons but of slaves and masters, the ones consumed by envy, the others by contempt. Nothing is further removed from affection and from a political partnership; for partnership involves the element of affection—enemies do not wish to have even a journey in common. The city wishes at any rate to be made up of equal and similar persons to the extent possible, and this is most particularly the case with the middling elements. So this city must necessarily be governed in the best fashion if it is made up of the [middle class].… Moreover, of citizens in cities these most particularly preserve themselves. For neither do they desire the things of others, as the poor do, nor others their [property], as the poor desire that of the wealthy; and as a result of not being plotted against or plotting against others they pass their time free from danger.… It is clear, therefore, that the political partnership that depends on the middling sort is best as well, and that those cities are capable of being well governed in which the middling element is numerous… Thus it is the greatest good fortune for those who are engaged in politics to have a middling and sufficient property, because where some possess very many things and others nothing, either [rule of] the people in its extreme form must come into being, or unmixed oligrachy, or—as a result of both of these excesses—tyranny. For tyranny arises from the most headstrong sort of democracy and from oligarchy, but much less often from the middling sorts [of regime] and those close to them. 43

This classic text describes a society divided into rigid classes of rich and poor, into men who, because of their arrogance or their envy, act like masters and slaves.

It is important to see that, despite their great differences, the rich and the poor have much in common: they cannot be reasonable, because their judgment is distorted by passions; they cannot, therefore, be free (freedom, for Aristotle, being a moral-intellectual condition of the soul, not absence of external constraints on our actions); finally, they have short lifetimes, since the regime is unstable against continual plots and factions. For these reasons, a middle class is a necessary condition of decent government, but the existence of a middle class is "the greatest good luck"; that is, it is not within our power to create a middle class intentionally, thus not within our power to establish "good government from reflection and choice." This is an important reason for the cautious reserve of ancient political thought concerning what we can expect from politics. Between Aristotle and The Federalist stands the revolution of modernity, of the 17th Century, characterized by its exaltation of human creative power in science and technology, politics and economics. John Locke, the philosophical founder of liberal democracy, is a participant in this revolution. In The Second Treatise of Government we find a powerful expression of the modern political attitude: "that prince who shall be so wise and godlike as by established laws of liberty to secure protection and encouragement to the honest industry of mankind, against the oppression of power and narrowness of party, will quickly be too hard for his neighbors." 44 This is the audacious optimism of modern political thought: the right kind of government (together with modern technology) can liberate the productive initiative of individuals interested in a better life for themselves and their children, and thereby create a middle class. Only in this way can the political community avoid the trap of extreme divisions and degrading dictatorship. Aristotle saw the trap but was unaware of the power of what came to be called political economy. In this respect, the Lockean lineage of the authors of The Federalist can be seen in the last species of faction listed by Madison.

The last species of faction (the fourth on the above list) is defined not by the amount of property, that is, by wealth and poverty, but by the kind of property: "A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views." 45 We see that these groups have "sentiments and views" instead of passions and opinions, and that they appear in "civilized nations." Madison thus indicates that this species of faction is less dangerous. Indeed, "the regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation." 46 In contrast to factions based on passion and the conflict between extremes of rich and poor, which either destroy or corrupt the legislative body, competition between interest groups is compatible with a free democracy, and even forms the principal subject of "modern legislation." For groups defined by a material interest in agriculture, tourism, commerce, manufacture, banking do not hate or contemn each other. They can make legislative compromises. 47 They give people a stake in monetary profit, and thereby in the improvement of their own material condition and education, things not directly related to race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, or social origins. They diversify society in a way that can cut across and weaken factional divisions of the more extreme kinds. In fact we recognize these interest-based factions as the economic sectors of a middle-class society with private ownership and a market economy. They are the basis of political parties in the contemporary Western sense. For example, the Democratic Party in the United States was originally based on farm interests and labor unions. Madison offers a regime which is based on, and which in turn promotes, the middle class—a regime, thus, in which the most dangerous factions are replaced by less dangerous factions, or by factions which, through the generation of jobs and wealth, can benefit the whole community (which would remove them from the category of "faction" as Madison defines it). Conversely, the lack of a diverse and efficient economy is a sufficient condition for a high level of activity of the most dangerous factions, as we see today in the countries of the former Soviet Bloc and in the third world. For example, in 1993, a group of Somali-Americans volunteered to return to Somalia to work as interpreters for US and UN military forces. They reported that, "their years in the United States had made them far less clan-conscious, and more aware that fierce clan loyalty is what put Somalia on its path of self-destruction." 48 The unresolved question is whether, in order to promote a middle class, there must not first be a middle class, i.e. the socio-economic conditions, the personal moral-intellectual qualities, and the associated legal order are reciprocal causes of each other. This is the three-way chicken-and-egg problem that now dominates the postcommunist transition, and admits no theoretical solution.

For Madison, the alternatives in political life are few and hard: either we get rid of factions but destroy liberty, or we preserve liberty but must cope with factions—factions based on passion or on interest, or, in the worst case, on both. The problem of ethnic factions is grave because it involves aspects of all the types of factions described here. But the decisive characteristic of ethnic factions seems to be the conjunction of passionate hatred with a conviction of the victimization of one's own group by outsiders and their agents. There result in the worst cases, as Cvijeto Job's description of the disintegration of Yugoslavia makes clear, groups of people united and actuated by violent, narcissistic paranoia.

At the conclusion of the seventh paragraph of Federalist 10, there appears for the first time the word "legislation." 49 In the regulation of the diverse interests that interfere in a commercial society, the legislators are "advocates and parties to the causes which they determine." 50 The legislators are in fact members of interested factions (or, worse, of passion-based factions). If a group of legislators in a faction constitutes a majority in parliament, they are likely to impose laws oppressive for the minority. Tax laws provide the classic example. "Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number is a shilling saved to their own pockets." 51 Thus, although the multiplicity of interests is a necessary condition for ameliorating the problem of faction, it is not by itself sufficient. Even in a society with diverse economic interests and activities, a democracratic system permits the formation of a legislative majority that can follow a common impulse through legislation that oppresses a minority. Nor can we count on the superior quality of certain statesmen to direct the conflict of interests toward the common good. "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." 52 And when they are, they will often be unable to convince those that are inspired by immediate interest. At this point, the content of Madison's argument is as follows: if we want liberty to be safeguarded, it is impossible to remove the causes of faction; the only remaining possibility is thus to control the effects of faction.

Majorities, Minorities, and the Extended Republic

The effects that must be combated are the denial of the rights of other citizens and the erosion of the common good, which are sacrificed to the passion or interest of the predominant faction. These effects will appear in a democracy whenever a faction unites a majority of the people with a corresponding majority in the legislative body. The problem of oppressive majorities in a democratic regime is, therefore, the subject of Madison's argument henceforth. Combating the effects of faction reduces to preventing the formation of a majority faction that is able to be politically effective as such. This is in fact "the great object to which our inquiries are directed." 53

Preventing the formation of a majority faction can be realized either (1) by preventing the formation of the same passion or the same interest in a majority, or (2) by the fact that a majority that has such a common impulse is impeded "by their number and local situation" from uniting and implementing its plans of oppression. 54 Madison's argument will be that the multiplicity and variety of parties and interests in a large republic maximizes the probability of achieving this objective (either 1 or 2). Important in this paragraph is what will not serve the purpose: "If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control." 55 We see here the severe realism of Federalist 10. The problem of faction means that a durable structure for freedom and democracy cannot be left to depend on human virtue, on the justice and self-control of individuals. However necessary such virtue may be, it is not sufficient.

A pure or direct (nonrepresentative) democracy is defenseless against faction. Equality of rights leads to inequality of possessions, and difference of opinions, and passions. From this form of government in a small population and living in a small territory, a common impulse and an opportunity to act will necessarily arise. Thus, "there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual." 56 Direct democracy is thus not a viable option.

A republic, in contrast to a direct democracy, is a viable option. "Republic" means a form of government "in which the scheme of representation takes place." 57 Here begins the account of republicanism. For Madison, "republic," means in the first place representative democracy. Within the genus "democracy", it is thus to be contrasted with pure or direct democracy. Federalist 47-51, on separation of powers, will deepen the account of republicanism, by comparison to other forms of political rule: monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, tyranny.

A republic is distinguished from pure democracy through two characteristics: 1) the activities of government are carried out by elected representatives; 2) the number of citizens and the size of the country can be greater than in a pure democracy. The effect of the first characteristic could be the refinement or filtration of the public views in favor of moderation and the common good. But, "[o]n the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers… or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests of the people."58 Again we see that, although human virtue is extremely important for a decent political system, we cannot count on it. Justice needs material support, here, in the form of geographic extent: for "extensive republics are most favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal" at least more so than small republics. 59 This effect follows from two causes. In the first place, in any republic, large or small, the number of representatives is bounded by upper and lower limits (usually from 200 to 800). The number must not be too small, in order to avoid "the cabals of a few," nor too large, in order to avoid "the confusion of a multitude." 60 Thus "if the proportion of fit characters" in a large republic is approximately equal to that in a small republic, the large republic will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a "fit choice." 61 This argument as well as the next one are mathematical in character.

In the second place, the greater the number of citizens that vote for a candidate, the smaller the chance that the candidate can "practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried."62 If the electoral district is too large, the representatives will not know the local problems and circumstances concerning which they must legislate. If it is too small, the representatives will not have a vision of the whole, being too close to local problems and circumstances. The effect of the size of the republic is thus important: the extended republic will comprehend "a greater variety of parties and interests… [making it] less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other."63

In a democratic republic, "to act in unison" would mean in the first place that the elected representatives of the majority faction make laws adverse to the rights of the minority. Madison's intention is that, owing to the variety of parties and interests in the extended commercial republic, each representative should represent multiple interests, 64 being thereby obligated to make legislative compromises for "the regulation of these various and interfering interests." A democracy beset with majority faction contrasts clearly with a Madisonian republic. The disease of majority faction means that each representative represents one or the other of two exclusive and radically opposed interests, either the interest of the majority, or that of the minority. Thus the division of the society into two contradictory parts is immediately reflected in the legislative body (parliament or congress). The contradiction between majority and minority is expressed in laws oppressive of the minority. The resulting conflict leads to the breakdown of decent government.

Conclusion

As David Epstein sharply observes, human diversity exists by nature and is by nature a powerful irritant. 65 Thus by nature, factions form and enter into conflict among themselves. The extended commercial republic, promoted by The Federalist, offers the best possibility of reducing the dangers of faction to the rights of citizens and the common good. Being commercial, this republic encourages factions based on interest in order to discourage factions based on passion. Being large, it includes a multitude of groups and interests, thereby impeding the formation of a faction composed of a majority.

The theory contained in Federalist 10 is realistic: visions of human perfection and appeals to moral virtue play little role, because factious passions and demagogic egotism are too powerful. The rights of the individual in a democracy can be assured only if human passions and interests are accepted as natural and are channeled in the least destructive way.

But this doctrine, although successful, is troubling; it seems low and selfish. Does successful democratic practice require a low theoretical understanding of man? This is a notorious philosophical problem of liberal democracy. Harvey Mansfield has summarized it well:

There are two main objections to liberal democracy… one by communism, the other by fascism. Those two objections have some validity to them, even if communism and fascism don't. Communism objected that liberal democracy is too selfish and unconcerned with the whole and fascism claimed that liberal democracy is base and unconcerned with the noble. Both of those are to some extent true. That's why I would say that liberal democracy is not a complete fulfillment of human nature.… One could always imagine a challenge to it, a better regime. In practice, this "better" might turn out worse, as happened with communism and fascism, but people may well be tempted to try. 66

Thus liberal democracy shines only when it has an antidespotic mission. To be seen as noble, to inspire devotion and sacrifice, our concept of freedom must be seen from the perspective of slavery.

Slavery and the Civil War constitute the catastrophic failure of American government. These events can and should be viewed through the prism of Federalist 10. In the southern states, the rights of a minority were destroyed by the local majority. Through the territorial extension of the Union, the local majority, the supporters of slavery, were becoming a national minority, and thus a minority in Congress (rather than an equal part). This position was unacceptable to the southern states, which refused to abolish slavery. At the same time, the mentality characteristic of a society of masters and slaves blocked the economic development essential for "a multiplicity of parties and interests." That mentality, discussed by Aristotle in Politics IV.11, was described again by Tocqueville in 1831:

For the first time we have had a chance to examine the effect that slavery produces on society. On the right bank of the Ohio, everything is activity, industry, labor is honored; there are no slaves. Pass to the left bank and the scene changes so suddenly that you think yourself on the other side of the world; the enterprising spirit is gone. There, work is not only painful; it is shameful, and you degrade yourself in submitting yourself to it. To ride, to hunt, to smoke like a Turk in the sunshine: there is the destiny of the White. 67

The servility of the slave, the arrogance of the master, and—the point that Aristotle did not make—the contempt for work common to both sealed the economic fate of the American south in the antebellum period.

The southern states and their representatives in Congress thus crystalized into a single bloc actuated by a common interest adverse to the rights of individuals and the common good. The northern states united into a single bloc opposed to slavery with no possibility of peaceful compromise between the two factions. There resulted the crises of secession and the Civil War, the bloodiest war in American history. This event, without which there would be no statue of liberty in America, profoundly transformed the United States. In the words of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner,

The eight years… from 1860 to 1868 uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the politics of a people, transformed the social life of half country the and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or three generations. 68

This transformation is probably the closest thing in American history to the postcommunist transition begun in 1989. The American Civil War was no accident; it was fought for a clear intention, for the restoration of the fundamental principle of liberal democracy: individuals have rights and the purpose of government is to protect them. Thus we can say that America had to be founded twice, or that the adequate founding lasted 89 years. It was indeed, as Hamilton proposed, a product of "reflection and choice"—and excruciatingly difficult. Locke's audacity is appropriate; his optimism, less so. Perhaps Madison's phrase best fits the spirit of this arduous effort: honorable determination. 69