Why are States and Cities Different from Each Other? That is “The Question” which this history seeks to answer.

This book begins at the beginning: the initial settlement of the colony. I view the initial settlement as a work in progress. I think it fair and reasonable to assert the first decades are a rather rough affair in American colonial history. Certainly we saw that in Jamestown, and Virginia’s first three-four decades vividly demonstrated a lack of effective planning and its political and economic system was both reactive and based on the most elemental drivers: desperation, survival, and extremely opportunistic agricultural entrepreneurs. This history posits that cities and states develop their first (and subsequent) policy systems from the interaction of geography, climate, the initial political culture (Tidewater), its initial political structures installed to maintain order and usually safety.its unique residential demographic configuration, and its initial economic base.

Since relationships with the original residents, Native Americans were at best uneven, and more characterically hostile–on both sides–safety and site control were important drivers of policy and political structures. I am tempted to wildly assert political culture as I use it in this book for all intents did not exist and was not filled until the political culture installed by royal Governor Berkeley took root. The reader saw in Virginia the prototype of the plantation-driven policy system. The value system and expectations that comprised the political culture reflected the demographic grouping imported by Berkeley and the plantation into which it was placed. If so, economics once again prevailed embedding itself in the political culture that formed. That policy system did not reach maturity until the turn of the eighteenth century–ironically at about the same time as Pennsylvania, initially settled almost seventy-five years later.

Virginia’s agricultural economic base predisposed its political structures. Dispersed tobacco plantations whose placement was determined by geography, soils and river access meant little to no urban settlements, and from dispersion came an initial reliance of counties, not towns or villages. County became the principal level and political structure of Virginia–and I argue it still remains so today–at least through 2010 or so. In the 1800’s  county was adopted by South Carolina, and introduced into cotton plantation economy and the Rise of the Cotton Belt installed the county into the Deep South political culture. Things get more complicated in the Deep South culture, but as far as political structures go, the American southeast and south central states–straight through to the Mississippi River  will cast a distinct decentralized inward-looking policy system. The plantation county is the basic form of Tideland and Deep South sub-state policy systems today. I will later explain how I see southern cities and the state-policy system fit into this in later chapters.

This pattern is not replicated in Pennsylvania.

We have already discussed what William Penn had in mind for his proprietary colony. In Pennsylvania we see a different pattern: a balanced economic base between urban and rural, with a decidedly urban tilt, yet, whatever economic future was intended, Penn’s Frames of Government were hit or miss affairs that intended to import traditional English governance , but instead practiced a not well-liked Proprietary authoritarian political structures and decision-making that clashed with both the Quaker political culture, and the imported embryonic structures of English democracy. What we will not see in Pennsylvania, the dog that didn’t bark, is hostile Native American reaction to Penn’s colonial settlement–thanks to Penn’s enlightened Quaker foreign policy–and mercifully since the Quakers were pacifists, there was little need for self-defense, and NO militia–at least until the middle 1740’s. That absence of conflict gave Penn some leeway in running his Proprietorship through a mixed democratic and propriety political structures. In-migration was constant, mostly Quakers at first, but increasingly eclectic in terms of ethnicity and religion, and so the colony was usually in an expansionist growth mode, predominantly agricultural, but with commercial development not far behind.

Penn’s imported initial sub-provincial political structures were more “implied” than installed. His mind evidently was more on the provincial legislature than either the county, the urban municipal corporation or the hinterland township (which he pretty well controlled until they were actually settled). Once populated sub-provincial political structures, both urban and hinterland, were restive from the start. At the provincial level where democratic features were mostly installed, the clash with his Proprietary executive branch was immediate. Penn’s initial legislation failed to secure approval in 1682-3, and he had to negotiate it out. Things went downhill after that. Provincial-level executive versus legislation war was well in place by 1690–and it never really abated right through the American Revolution (1776) when the Proprietary was tossed out.

The reasons for this never-ending war are many and will be explained in the following modules, but that provincial level struggle in its good time expressed itself in the remaking of sub-provincial levels of government, the development of Pennsylvania’s policy-making branches of government, and begat a set of policy systems that competed, were consciously limited in activism and functions, and which were each entrusted with their own set of democratic forms which over time let each level of Pennsylvania’s policy system develop to some extent its own roots that ensured a level of autonomy from the other levels. What happened is that policy developed by policy areas, beginning with the judicial separation into an independent branch, then taxes and fiscal, and from there to a number of functions such as public safety, care of the poor, and highways-transportation. Special structures were created to handle each of these–meaning in particular that coordinated comprehensive county and town structures were woefully undeveloped and without sufficient capacity. Provincial level policy system pursued its own agenda, which included local goverance only to the extent it was useful in its battle against the Proprietary.

Equally important this internally-at-odds with itself, and intentionally decentralized to encourage more government at lower levels where it would be more accountable to its residents/citizens, often meant a government that could not satisfy demands for increasing services, infrastructure, and even self-defense. If Penn’s policy system was under pressure, even failing outright at times, its economic and population growth was  sustained and after 1720 reasonably spectacular–creating even more pressure on Penn’s flailing (literally) policy-making structures.

Accordingly, Pennsylvania’s path to political and economic development was different than Virginia’s–with political development characterized by duplicate and battling political polarization and structural conflict, the private sector assume a considerable degree of autonomy from a limited and fragmented public section, and over time became a force to be reckoned with; Privatization is what we call it, and it filled in the gaps left within the policy systems with its own private leadership, resources, and policy area structures. What also developed, incrementally, was opportunities for voters to express themselves over specific policy areas and programs, gather political experience, and in times of stress opportunities to assert themselves. Under extreme stress, as we shall see later, after 1765 we will see this take a turn that we shall call “populist”. I mention this at this point only to alert the reader that decentralized and functionally dispersed sub-state policy systems perhaps paradoxically allowed both private elites and citizen/non voter masses avenues to political involvement and participation.

In the future we will talk about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania as a bastion of Privatism, and the most radical state in the Articles of Confederation, with the most radical state Constitution found in the Thirteen Colonies. These weakened policy systems that we are about to discuss will give Pennsylvania a rather turbulent roller coaster ride once independence was achieved. If anything, Virginia was just the opposite. So states and their cities do differ–from the beginning–because of their path to political/economic development, and the political-economic policy-making structures they set up along that path. The key to understanding much of our approach is that politics and policy-making may change over the next several hundred years, but it will be shaped and fitted into the political structures, relationship between levels of government, and the experience/heritage/legacy of policy-making that occur during that first policy system. As Uhtred (the Last Kingdom) said, “destiny is all”–but he never was able to escape the realities of his childhood and his Saxon-Dane political cultures.

 

What follows are modules that focus on (1) the city of Philadelphia municipal corporation, (2) the County and Township, and (3) the Provincial Legislature. A fourth module will conclude the mini-series by comparing Virginia and Pennsylvania and providing hints about what to look for when we discuss Massachusetts

When we are done with all three states we will see the answer to our original question more clearly. States and cities were always different in important ways: their path of political development, the economic base which they formed, and the political culture that jelled on which future policy systems would have to deal. From the start of our colonial history, each of our states were individually bent in certain ways, toward certain ends and were encased in a foundation set of policy-making structures and institutions that impacted subsequent policy systems, often to the present day.

As the colonial provincial “twig” was bent; so grew the American state and local “tree”.