the “Little Picture”–Impact on our Chapter One Model

Chapter 4

In Chapter 4 we start out with the assumption that the initial formation of a state policy system is perhaps the single most important time period for a state–and that also includes its regional and municipal policy systems as well. So what have we learned from our Kentucky-Tennessee case study

QUESTIONS: Difference and Effects of elite-closed vs. populist-open policy systems output and processes

Importance of understanding elite cultures on policy-making and the clash of elite cultures within a closed policy system–CD vs. MEP

Consequences of populist-preferred political structures on ED outputs and priorities of ED–sustainability and unintended consequences

Introduction to Styles of Policy Systems

Kentucky and Tennessee as we pointed our earlier are immediate neighbors and they “developed–settled”– exactly in the same time frame.Moreover, they both were settled by the same core ethnic groups and cultures–especially if one considers that North Carolina was bi-modal with a substantial infusion from Virginia and South Carolina. They both were saturated with Virginian elites, and they both had opportunities for importing the Virginia plantation–yeoman-hardscrabble economic base. They were very much Tidewater in their cultural leanings, and both ought to have written a constitution that reflected Virginia’s approach to governance and economics. They were both agricultural (plantation, yeoman, or hardscrabble). They both allowed slavery, and although controversial, was the third rail in each’s politics. They both were trans-Appalachian and both on the foreign-controlled east banks of the Mississippi River. According to my Chapter One Model they shared much and their “drivers” were seemingly identical. Not so they evolved their own distinctive paths to the present day, and they are very different from each other. Why are they different?”

I will argue that several factors will “bend” each state’s policy “twig” in somewhat different directions and ways. The Settlement-Conquest duration and intensity was one, and the different settlement “configurations” of ethnic migration (Big Sorts, so to speak) will produce different patterns of  elite-mass “cultural clash” that led to the formation of different constitutions and initial state policy systems. A third factor, less obvious unless one is sensitive to their individual histories, is the importance of elite leadership and  how their political elites were different (who they were, their personalities and values). Having said this, the reader will be forgiven for a possible reflection they share so much they are two peas in a pod. They both adopted Virginia’s system of sub-state governance (counties), and both state-level institutions were hesitant to set the tune for their sub-state units, preferring to stick to their straight and narrow, low tax, low service, limited government preferences. Neither state had much of an economic development-related agenda (education, public works, and internal improvements). No one is likely to think them clones of Massachusetts, or Philadelphia. Nor were they similar to South Carolina. But it turns out they were not identical fraternal twins; they were more paternal.

Still, the modules suggest why Tennessee did not participate in the the 1797-1800 national crisis created by the Virginia-Kentucky Resolutions. That episode calls attention to their different paths within two years of having achieved statehood. Whatever they shared, two different policy systems were already in operation. Tennessee was, it turned out, less Tidewater, and more hardscrabble Scots-Irish populist.

Settlement-Conquest–States differ for obvious reasons lodged in its time-specific geography of its initial settlement. The usual suspects (location, location, location), the prevailing economic base, and in America’s case, the immigration and migration of new settlers into a wilderness. In Kentucky/Tennessee case study, we also find that “European-American” settlement involved conquest–which was also true of the original fourteen colonies (albeit forgotten and pushed off to the side). Settlement-Conquest raises uncomfortable issues and moral concerns, rightfully, but the duration, brutality,complexity, even injustice all poured themselves into the settlement of the state, its drive to statehood, and its initial (and therefore future) policy systems.  The simple struggle for survival in a wilderness settlement-conquest state consumes the common man–and elites as well. In a settlement-conquest (think of Israel today) someone gets conquered–and that leaves its heritage, morally, economically, politically/culturally–and structurally. Kentucky non-Indian migrants achieved reasonable security and site-control earlier than Tennessee whose settlement conflict is not “contained” until the 1820’s. Its neighbor  Georgia’s extended through the 1830’s (its Trail of Tears formally begins in 1831).

Where Native Americans were most successful and resilient in dealing with white settlement, they essentially created a lag in the pace of economic development evolution  relative to that of many other states. We refer to this as a “lag”, and they are in a sense out of sync with both economic and political development in other states and locations. Historical description focusing on change, usually shifts to topics and geography where change is most pronounced. Unintended, it is not unusual for the reader to simply forget that change is relative and flows unevenly and that some geographies are lagging “behind”. Kentucky and Tennessee, among others, simply get lost after mention of Daniel Boone. That is unfortunate because Kentucky and Tennessee matter, in their own right, of course, but as an important topic in the evolution of American state/local economic development.

Kentucky, certainly an arena of conquest, was able to get a head start on Tennessee because an acceptable level of site control came about a decade earlier. Tennessee, the first to be settled, was the last to reach statehood–and Tennessee did not catch up to Kentucky until the 1820’s. Today it is the larger of the two states. To be fair, it must be conceded the Appalachian mountains also played a considerable role as well–today’s “Appalachia”, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, are witness to the difficulty of establishing an economic base high in the mountains. Talk about lag–Appalachia is the poster child of lag. But the Native American settlement-conquest experience is man-made and it became inseparable from these state’s political/economic development. It needs to be integrated into the policy systems, as it will have consequences for economic development.

the Importance of the Lag Effect on the Urban Competitive Hierarchy–We shall later learn Ohio’s and Northwest Ordinance states (today’s east of the Mississippi Midwest) golden age of settlement was a bit later than Kentucky/Tennessee and will be picked up in later chapters. Fascinated as we might be with west of the Mississippi western settlement, the settlement-conquest of the first American southwest in our present-day south central states was . We shall further explore this issue as we discuss the “rise of the Cotton Belt” in future chapters. Essentially, the reader might sense we are explaining why ED policy-making, if not state and local policy-making systems, have evolved into very distinctive regional systems–and they carry that heritage to this very day. American economic development is the aggregate of regional (and eventually sub-regional) patterns. Not every region is using economic development to accomplish the same goals, using the same strategies at the same time.

Underappreciated, settlement-conquest creates a developmental lag with other states have have already resolved the settlement-conflict disruption. That lag is attenuated by the delay it imposes on the state’s ability/capacity to promptly commence its state-building institutionalization, i.e. empowering itself with institutions, processes, that are essential to development of its economic base, and political development. established relationships between key actor that are in effect pre-conditions for subsequent policy-making. In economic development, the rule of law and establishment of a banking/fiscal system are fundamental prerequisites of modern ED policy-making. In Chapter 4 modules we see that this lag consumed at least a generation–in fact in both states institutionalization is still not competed as we finish the Chapter. Starting a policy system from scratch in a wilderness is not a simple flip of the switch. State-building (and city-building) when linked to Settlement and Settlement-Conquest inherently consumes more time than one imagines. The policy system that follows statehood in a wilderness-settlement-conquest is a policy system that confronts serious issues, in which economic development, and the establishment of an economic base must wait until basic security issues are resolved, and settlement itself, involving a mosaic of groups and cultures pouring in large numbers “settles down” and jells into sustainable and recognized patterns.

Since as we have discovered, state-building institutionalization can be horribly disruptive, divisive, and polarizing, early policy systems are systems in transition. They are not mature into the state-building period is reasonably completed. The initial state constitution which established the policy-making framework for the initial policy system is not the final word on the subject. Kentucky rewrote its constitution within seven years, partly because it was obvious to its original creators that dissatisfaction with the original constitution was sufficiently profound that it needed to include a “second bite” at the constitution-writing apple. While outside this chapters’s time frame, Tennessee did the same in 1834. Whatever lessons are to be gleaned from the initial policy system require looking back, a hindsight, that is not reached until one sees what the mature policy system looks like. Structure, like cement, need time to harden; only then can we see the cracks. Given the limited time frame in this chapter, both states are still works-in-progress on that matter.

The incompleteness of state-building institutionalization during the initial years of the state policy system in both Kentucky and Tennessee meant any initial lag in economic development was given a second life. Other states which more successfully completed state-building institutionalization were able to move on to develop more competitive and diversified economic bases. In future chapters the reader will discover these economic bases offered jobs and urban lifestyle to immigrants that discouraged further chain migration and a career in non-agricultural occupations–they took another path than the one followed in either Kentucky or Tennessee.

 

Kentucky and Tennessee: Culture, Populism and Partisanship Embedded into Policy Systems by State Constitutions

At the core of the Interrupted Revolution is an elite-mass distinction and struggle. The formation of the Federalist Tribe, the writing of the U.S. Constitution and the election of the Washington Administration did nothing but intensify the salience of the Interrupted Revolution to large numbers of non-elites, and even those reluctant to involve themselves in politics. Trans-Appalachian western migration into the nation’s interior, with the inevitable formation of new states provided yet a new opportunity to complete the Revolution and finish the job, albeit in a limited geography. The reality that migration into the two new states involved considerable numbers of the ethnic group and political culture most inclined to Interrupted Revolution: the Scots-Irish. But the unifying strand likely resident in most western migrants was to “escape” the confines of civilization and policy systems as they understood it in the eastern states. It was not only the Scots-Irish that wanted more than the Federalist Tribe Consensus  yielded. Midland Quakers (Daniel Boone) and Regulation War refugees, French Huguenots (John Sevier) were also uncomfortable with Alien & Sedition laws, banks, and the Federalist definition of property contract and land ownership. Although no friend of Black Africans, many instinctively thought slavery was a violation of moral, human and egalitarian notions of a democratic republic. Slavery was the third rail of the Federalist Tribe Consensus.

In 1775-6 a number of Articles of Confederation state constitutions were written, in the heat of Lexington, Concord and the Declaration of Independence.Pennsylvania, the most radical, but Virginia (written by Jefferson) was close behind. Maryland and North Carolina also produced revolutionary war inspired democratic republican constitutions inspired by Virginia especially. In each of these constitutions, the Scots-Irish played a major role, and as one can discern they were, excepting the most radical, lodged in the Tidewater region. Amend as necessary to correspond with the three branches of the 1789 U.S. Constitution, and definitely including their version–usually more developed, specific and wordy than the federal first ten amendments–of the Bill of Rights, the state constitutions nationally were not clones of themselves nor of the federal constitution. Today the distinction may seem subtle, but more likely much is assumed that in adopting a three branch system with Bill of Rights these constitutions were essentially identical, with distinctions only noted by lawyers and the legal community. Not so!

Pennsylvania, the first, forged in the opening days after the reading of the Declaration of Independent by “mobs” (populated by large numbers of Scots-Irish disembarking from ships from the British Isles) and the general population. They that kicked out the old Pennsylvania colonial elite and through Sam and John Adams, plus Thomas Paine they booted the Pennsylvania moderate elites out as well. A populist coalition, chaired by Benjamin Franklin, wrote the most radical state constitution ever written in the United States. To simplify for this history, the most salient feature of that constitution is what I call the “sovereign legislature”. That legislature, elected by the most unrestricted electorate known on the planet at that time, itself elected or appointed the Governor and the Judiciary. The idea was the Legislature represented the people, who with an unrestricted electorate were able to represent “the common man” and not be subservient to the “aristocrats”. Representatives should “represent” their constituents, and not act as a “Burkean delegate” who votes his best judgment. Interestingly, the Burkean delegate was more how the plantation owner thought.

The flip side of a sovereign legislature is a weakened checks and balances. Most affected by weak checks and balances was the appointment of officials–in a one-tribe state this became a monopoly and both created and reinforced the formation of internal factions. For all practical purposes the sovereign legislature was a near clone of the British Parliament (absent a functional political party system)  in which was lodged the people’s sovereignty. What was left out was that fellow, George III, the King. If there was a unifying them in the Revolutionary War constitution, it was against concentrations of authority. Anything that smacked of George III and his “corrupt and arbitrary authority, was blasted into smithereens in the Revolutionary War constitution–and that carrried over to concentrations of wealth in society and economy. Government should no longer serve the interests of those “elites”. In its place the Pennsylvania constitution attempted to be the closest to pure democracy of the common man since the direct democracy of Athens. That constitution was replaced in 1787, but even as amended Pennsylvania was still the new nation’s most “democratic” state policy system.

However radical and democratic they were, the Interrupted Revolutionists had to contend with the issue of slavery–particularly when the states in question, Kentucky and Tennessee were decidedly south of the Mason-Dixon line. Both states, since their very earliest days, had slaves among their residents. By 1792, nearly one-in-four Kentucky households owned slaves, and the percentage varied considerably where plantations were taking hold. Tennessee with few Virginia planters in eastern Tennessee, its population base, possessed fewer slaves, and with more Midlands Quakers exhibited a decided tilt away from slavery. But both states were Tidewater, and as discussed earlier, Tidewater and its elites, the home base of slavery in those years, was bi-modal in its view of slavery. None were northern abolitionists by any means, but slavery was a stain as much as it was a central pillar in their export plantation economy. Religion, and it should be noted that the 1790’s were the first decade of the Second Great Awakening, was not loved. The remedy for it, however never was to abandon the peculiar institution abruptly, but to let it evolve out of existence. Until it disappeared, Tidewater elites and masses were for the most part insistent that the state’s should allow “people as property”, and given the strong position of plantation owners in the economy, politics and society, slavery was always the third rail of state constitution-writing.

Kentucky–Those constitutions, plus Virginia’s and North Carolina, the respective mother states of Kentucky and Tennessee–along with the U.S. Constitution– were the ingredients for the authors of Kentucky and Tennessee’s constitutions–and the reader should keep in mind North Carolina used Virginia’s as a model. Yet, Kentucky’s constitution produced a decidedly different policy system than the one adopted by Tennessee. Written about four years apart, timing did create a difference–federal approval of the prospective state constitution had changed radically. Kentucky’s constitution was approved by a Congress still dominated by its Federalist majority; Tennessee’s was written with a Democrat-Republican majority in the House and a strong minority in the Senate–and in the heat of a presidential election terminating the Washington administration. Tennessee, if admitted brought new D-R electoral votes to the presidential election, and the likely prospect of D-R seats in Senate and House. Partisanship had arrived on the American scene by 1796. So it is logical to expect that advocates sympathetic to the Interrupted Revolution faced different tactical situations, which when combined with the radically different nature of the constitutional convention leadership, produced two radically different state constitutions.

Kentucky attracted many sons and daughters of Virginia Tidewater planters who saw in Bluegrass central Kentucky the opportunity to establish new  plantations. Hardscrabble and yeoman farmers competed at a disadvantage with them in acquiring fertile and accessible land. The constitutional convention was easily dominated by Virginia born, its chair George Nicholas, a close friend of James Madison, was by nature a Tidewater Federalist. The two groups that duked it out writing the first constitution, and the populists were got their demands for an electorate unrestricted by either religious, property or tax requirements. Kentucky’s franchise was as radical as Pennsylvania’s.

The Federalists, fearing the radical democracy of incipient D-R’, constructed a state policy process in which the governor stood as a bulwark against the powerful legislature. The Governor and the Senate was elected by a Kentucky version of an electoral college–not by direct election–and the former was significantly empowered, including a veto and 2/3’s overturn, creating arguably the strongest Governor in the entire United States. From this checks and balances an an independent Judiciary began to evolve. The legislature of the people consisted solely of the House which was anything but sovereign, embedded in a strong checks and balances system.  Outmaneuvered and outvoted, adherents of the Interrupted Revolution were able to secure one last success–a section that called for a second constitutional convention in five years. Seventeen days after it started, the first Kentucky constitutional convention had completed its work.

Kentucky’s first governor followed in the much larger footprints of George Washington. A charismatic, Virginia-born Indian fighter and Revolutionary War general, Issac Shelby was not by nature or choice a politician. He gravitated toward his natural talents, Indian fighting and became consumed by national politics, the Citizen Genet affair in particular. With little domestic agenda, the strong powers of the governor languished, and the state drifted. Under continual assault from its Interrupted Revolution adherents, who through increased migration now constituted a majority of the electorate, were able to redo the constitution of a state policy system in which they felt served the interests of the aristocrats, and certainly not theirs.

Dissatisfied from the start with a state government in which planters and professional elites dominated the policy system, they railed against the “aristocrats”. More than anything they were determined to prevent the use of state government for the aristocrat’s economic advantage, and instead to make it friendly to the interests of the common people. Given the opportunity, they approved the writing of second constitution in 1798. The new one, a constitution that was hotly debated, including a newly-resident lawyer-delegate Henry Clay, weakened the governor substantially, empowered the Legislature, and ended indirect election of the Governor/Senate by the electoral college, making it subject to direct vote by the unrestricted electorate. The Federalist checks and balances of the first constitutions were reduced to a minimum and, local government was strengthened.

Tennessee–Tennessee’s ethnic configuration, less Tidewater Virginians, and lots more Scots-Irish and Midlands than Kentucky had in 1791. They were far fewer in eastern Tennessee, and Middle Tennessee was sparsely settled, still in its very earliest settlement days. Tennessee’s initial constitution was much more a political document crafted to ensure its passage in a turbulent Congress in a turbulent partisan atmosphere, than an ideological-conceptual statement. Blount, the federal governor of the Southwest District who ran the territory, was in charge throughout that state’s drive to statehood–and was chair of its constitutional convention. A leader of considerable complexity, a land speculator the equal of Robert Morris and George Washington, he was also a politician by profession, and an astute one at that. His political machine, every bit as formidable as that of Tammany Hall, dominated Tennessee politics and held a clear majority in the constitutional convention. Fast-pacing the deliberation, Blount had the votes and when he didn’t compromised to get them. Blount’s considerable political experience had been in the North Carolina legislature–powerful if disorganized, faction-ridden and corrupt–and whatever state constitutions were considered in Tennessee’s debate, the flow of its decisions was to replicate that body.

So when Tennessee got its chance, it produced a constitutions with its version of a limited governor and a powerful legislature–and mirrored the open franchise of Kentucky, even more so. In Tennessee, unlike Kentucky, even Freed Black men could theoretically vote. Wanting to convince Congress the constitution enjoyed near-unanimous support from Tennessee denizens, Blount compromised and negotiated away to forge a consensus that bartered away a strong Federalist constitution, in favor of a stronger legislature, weaker governor, and judiciary in the hands of the Legislature and Governor. Blount took the compromised constitution and successfully maneuvered it through the divided partisan Congress.

The “Roots” of American Economic Development were Truly Roots:

As we look out our windows today, American economic development is urban, technological, industrial, and finance laden. Drivers of growth such as innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship are more digital than physical, and education is the key to their mastery. It was not always thus. For most of our history, the predominant economic base was agriculture, and it was the wealth derived from agriculture that financed early domestic manufacturing and finance. It is from agriculture that modern economic development evolved to its present state. Agriculture consumed all of the Early Republic through the Civil War–and modern economic development followed only after that. It is with agriculture that we start our history so to understand the heritage and legacy of that system of economics and politics that still affect us today. Early economic development grew alongside and among agriculture, like weeds in a flower bed some would argue. Early forms of economic development were adapted to agricultural needs and demands, and our proverbial ED twig was frequently bent by the impacts of forces largely agricultural-related–like Early Republic populism and Thomas Jefferson’s fostering of the yeoman farmer. For most of our first seventy-five years we must look at modern economic development through the prism of agricultural and rural hinterland economics.

Settlement as Land Rush and Real Estate Speculation--In the pre-1800 period, the importance of the mode of trans-Appalachian transportation available (feet, horse, and maybe a wagon) is fundamental to the settlement process–and logically seriously affects its ability to develop and grow economically, and even demographically. Today transportation infrastructure, of course always critical, is so matured that isolation and access is relative not absolute. In 1790, wilderness isolation combined by settlement conflict was “absolute”, access,to the outside world somehow had to be made if settlement and growth was to follow. We have seen in Kentucky/Tennessee that settlement growth occurred without a solid transportation infrastructure in place, but open to conjecture is what could happen if such an infrastructure (think trans-continental railroad) were already in place. The matter is compounded because the level of technology available to transportation was not capable of crossing the Appalachian mountains–we could not even get wagons easily into Tennessee by the first decade of the eighteenth century. As we shall see in future chapters, developmental transportation infrastructure eventually will become the most critical issue/strategy pursued by trans-Appalachian state and local policy systems. I will argue that it will become America’s first major economic development paradigm.

Just a gentle reminder. Notice I refer to “developmental”–in this case transportation-related–infrastructure, not simple “infrastructure”. Developmental infrastructure is a subset of infrastructure. It will be defined ad nausea in the future. Developmental infrastructure is a very important economic development strategy, a cornerstone of our history. The reader who persists in reading this history will be able to trace its evolution; today we have space travel, and alternative energy,  and even artificial intelligence. But we shall also see other forms of infrastructure transform themselves into their own formal economic development strategy. Consider high-speed rail, not developmental at all, is an example of yet another strategy, Keynesian or “Big Push” infrastructure. That distinction mercifully lies well into our future.

That is one reason our opening of this history starts with George Washington and his canal project–a project that led to the writing of our Early Republic Constitution. His vision, at least as far as economic development is concerned, is to me, breath-taking. What these Chapter 3 modules suggest is that as early as the 1770’s Washington clearly understood the tasks and nature of trans-Appalachian settlement. We see the wisdom in George Washington’s fear, the fear which drove his Patowmack Canal, that unless the United States could control settlement, and harness the economic growth of movement into the trans-Appalachian interior, foreign European powers would play havoc with the fragile independence achieved in the Revolutionary War.

In these module–and in our Chapter on the Virginia Dynasty, we shall see that first hand, and see the importance of access to the Spanish-held Mississippi River saturated the state path to statehood and their initial state policy systems–and would do so until the 1803-4 Louisiana Purchase. The global competition (one our our three levels of competitive hierarchies) mentioned in our Chapter One Model entered into why states are different from each other. They affected Kentucky’s and Tennessee’s path to statehood, and consumed a great deal of its policy system’s attention–and would continue to do so through most of the 19th century’s first decade. Economic development policy-making competed, and became intertwined with global hierarchies–and economic development came to be seen as a foreign policy and national defense strategy–wait until one understands Henry Clay and even Andrew Jackson if one questions this last observation.

We will see in Part II that geography and the lag, affecting both Kentucky and Tennessee,  part of a powerful political borderland, the Virginia-Tidewater home base. Their leaders will dominate national politics for the better part of a half-century. During that period these two states will also become an economic borderland between the Corn and Industrial Belts. The economic bases that will jell in this borderland during that half-century continue to the present day. That Kentucky and Tennessee will become America’s second “auto alley” is not an accident. That destiny began during the Civil War and immediately after in Reconstruction.

We have seen and will continue to see the first Ed sector-cluster gazelle of American ED is “land”. The fabrication of land ownership, how land was “assembled and subdivided”–what we call corruption today–in the 1790’s wilderness, how urban settlements were established–city-building  (or not)–was the first task in forming a state’s economic (and political) base. The boundaries of private and public in this wilderness economic development defies understanding of most contemporary readers, but it is from whence we came. This has been a tale of the truly “wild west” that in my opinion is more desperate and brutal than anything experienced west of the Mississippi. In any case, land development (and capital accumulation in rare instances) in a nation with an agricultural economic base is the functional equivalent of internet technology today. Land development dominated the policy systems of these early states, and most critically fueled the inherent gap between elites and masses–the first inequality that eventually brought the Jacksonian populists to national political power.