Herbert J. Storing (1928-1977) taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago from 1956 to 1977. At that time, Storing’s teacher, Leo Strauss, also taught in the Department.2 After Joseph Cropsey joined the Department in 1958, he and Storing became good friends and shared a suite of offices. From 1958 until 1967 Chicago’s political science graduate students had the good fortune to be able to study with three outstanding teachers: Strauss and Cropsey taught political philosophy while Storing taught courses in American constitutional law and public administration. Storing taught these subjects from a perspective informed by political philosophy.3 At the same time, he treated American politics as worthy of study, respect, and support on its own terms. In fulfilling this task, Storing prepared at least as many teachers who did not identify themselves with Strauss as those who did.4
Graduate students at Chicago in the 1960s did no practice teaching, nor did they receive any special instruction in teaching. Perhaps it was assumed that teaching can only be learned through the activity itself, and that that should not commence until one knows something. On the other hand, perhaps one can learn about teaching as a student. Students of Herbert Storing, by following the example of their teacher, learned how to teach at the same time that they learned about the American political regime.
As a classroom teacher, Storing pursued reasoned argument on the most important topics in American constitutionalism with rigor and clarity. He provided a full syllabus which contained an outline of the topics of the course as well as reading assignments. He combined clear lectures on the assigned material with ample opportunity for questions and comments from students. Storing’s presentations involved careful expositions of writings, and he often contrasted two different approaches to a given problem of government. At some points he would indicate why he preferred one argument to another. Students asked questions, made comments, and, on occasion, expressed a disagreement with Storing’s interpretations or judgments.These exchanges were an important part of the education Storing provided his students. Students were both respected as serious participants in the inquiry and they were obliged to follow and develop the argument fully In this way, Storing’s students were preparing themselves to become teachers who would also take their material and their students seriously. To support the notion that his students were partners in study and to encourage a respect for that activity, Storing employed the formal address with his students, e.g., Mr. or Miss or Mrs., and he referred to himself, on his syllabi, as Mr. Storing.5 Finally, he read his students’ work with diligence and provided them with a constructive assessment of their work. Often written work does not allow for the same sort of questioning which can occur in a classroom situation. Storing’s own writing, however, reflects the dialectical character of his teaching; he asks good questions and he considers the important objections to his argument.
In this essay, I describe Storing’s achievement as a teacher of political science and connect that achievement to the influence of Leo Strauss on the study of the American regime.This task may be self-evident since Storing acknowledged himself to be a Straussian, taught courses in two fields in American politics which can be subsumed under the term American constitutionalism, and, moreover, taught many of the same graduate students who studied with Strauss. However, to the best of my knowledge, Storing did not refer to Strauss in his classes, perhaps because he did not want students to think that American politics was a mere extension or application of political philosophy. Storing was so clearly his own man in his classroom teaching and in his scholarship, that no one ever thought of him as the executor of someone else’s design. Storing did provide a road map for tracing Strauss’ influence on his own work. Shortly after Strauss’ death in 1973, Storing wrote an essay, entitled “The Achievement of Leo Strauss.”6 Considering Strauss’ achievement as a political scientist, Storing wrote: “Strauss addressed himself to three prime characteristics of [contemporary] political science: its distinction between facts and values; its attempt to dissolve political things into their pre-political elements; and its blind assumption that the world of liberal democracy is the world as it is and ought to be.”7
On the first point, Storing explained that Strauss denied that value questions were outside the realm of rational discourse at the same time that he acknowledged the importance of facts. Since common sense knowledge, “which is always ’valuing’ knowledge ..., provides the only access to the world of politics we have,” it must be our starting point. This leads to Storing’s second point, that in opposition to the approach to politics which reduces it to economics, sociology, or psychology, Strauss revived “the view of politics as architectonic, as forming the human materials, including the sub-political lives and motivations, to its ends.... He showed the formative importance of times of founding and crisis, the very times typically ignored by political scientists.”
Storing’s third observation is that Strauss identified a critical paradox in the work of American “value free” political scientists: having reduced politics to the subrational sphere of preferences with no rational foundation, they nonetheless reflect the view that “liberal democracy is both natural and good.” Since the political scientist cannot argue the case on the merits, he therefore “nails his liberal democratic preferences to the mast” and proceeds “on to the scientific work with a clean conscience,” without “any serious examination of the case against liberal democracy” Strauss, Storing writes, “made his students confront the enemies of liberal democracy,” both ancient and modern. If such an approach did not lead to unqualified admiration of liberal democracy, it did allow students to appreciate the rational defense that could be made for a regime that combined consent with the securing of individual rights.Taken together, this meant that “Strauss’ constructive project was to recover sight of the ends of political life for a profession that had blinded itself to such considerations.” By exploring the writings of modern political philosophers, as well as the writings of ancient political philosophers, Strauss invited “a fresh and serious examination of the American Declaration of Independence, not as a reflection of the times but as the truth.” Furthermore, “he turned to the great men and the great books of political philosophy as teachers, not sociological resources.”8
I will use this account of Strauss’ achievement as a political scientist9 as the standard to connect Storing’s achievement as a teacher and scholar of the American regime to Strauss’ influence.10 I will examine Storing’s work in three areas: (A) the American Founding; (B) the Civil War and the Refounding, or Race and the Regime; and (C) the American Presidency and Bureaucracy. I intend to show how Storing’s work in each of these areas reflects his agreement with Strauss on the inadequacy of the Weberian “fact-value” distinction,11 the importance of treating politics on its own terms, and the need for a comprehensive perspective on liberal democracy
The first two areas reflect Storing’s interest in critical periods in American political and constitutional history. In his approach to these critical periods, Storing took seriously the speeches as well as the deeds of those who were responsible for governing. He took American politics seriously, after the fashion of Strauss’ revival of the importance of the citizen’s perspective on government.12 To judge a Jefferson, a Madison, a Hamilton, a Lincoln or a Frederick Douglass from the strictest intellectual standard did not require the assumption that these thoughtful practitioners were all knowing about politics. But taking their arguments seriously does put the student in a position to learn from these thinker-statesmen, and not to assume, without argument, that politics is governed exclusively by necessity and chance and never by deliberation and choice. Only by taking seriously the arguments that are offered, and demonstrating their flaws or limitations, can one conclude with confidence either that the thought is defective or incomplete. And the more one studies first rate political thought, as Storing did, the easier it is to distinguish between it and run of the mill opinions.
Storing provides a very good example of this in his introduction to What the Anti-Federalists Were For.13 He claims that the Constitution of the United States was “distinctive, even unique, in the extent to which it was the product of deliberation.” That deliberation involved a dialogue, in which the Anti-Federalist critics played an important part. In addition, while the Constitution settled many questions, concerning “a lasting structure of rules and principles,” Storing maintains that “the political life of the community continues to be a dialogue,” in which the Anti-Federalist concerns still play an important part. Citing the work of prominent American historians, such as Merrill Jensen, Gordon Wood and Bernard Bailyn, Storing distinguishes his approach from theirs; where they focus on social forces and treat thought as “ideology,” as reflective of the fundamental forces, Storing looks to the arguments of both sides of the debate over the Constitution, in order to understand the issues as the participants did.14 In describing how he will present the Anti-Federalist thought, which means how he will make coherent the diverse expressions of many individuals, Storing writes: “We are looking not so much for what is common as for what is fundamental.” Just as Storing focuses on Madison on the Federalist side because he “sees farther or better,”15 so Storing focuses on the more thoughtful Anti-Federalists, such as “Brutus,” “Federal Farmer,” and “Maryland Farmer.” And while Storing agrees in part with Cecelia Kenyon, whose well-known essay on the Anti-Federalists called them “Men of Little Faith,”16 he thinks that by taking their arguments seriously one can understand what their concerns were and recognize their merit, even if, on balance, one judges, as Storing did, that the Federalists had the stronger argument.17 To sketch out the argument we need to start with the framing of the Constitution in the Federal Convention.
Storing interpreted the framers’ deliberations leading up to the “Great Compromise” in a manner which did justice to principled differences as well as practical accommodations. The framers agreed on the most fundamental principles, such as the protection of individual rights in some form of republican government; but they disagreed on others, such as the structure and character of republican government. Storing focuses on “the question of principle, the answer in practice, and the way great politicians move from one to the other.”18 That question concerned the relationship between the union and the states: which one was natural and primary and which one was artificial and secondary? Under the Articles of Confederation, the states were primary; under the nationalist Virginia Plan, proposed at the outset of the Federal Convention, the union was primary. Storing points out that the deepest ground of this argument is reflected in two speeches on the nature of the Declaration of Independence. In support of the states, Luther Martin (of Maryland) argued that they declared their independence of one another as well as Great Britain, and hence remained the sovereign parties of any compact. In support of a strong national government, James Wilson (of Pennsylvania) argued that the United States declared their independence collectively, and hence the union was primary, the states secondary. This issue could not be resolved on legal principles alone, nor did it lend itself to unqualified compromise; it required a choice of one principle (national)19 over another (federal), a choice grounded in reasoned argument.
The “Great Compromise,” the first major achievement of the Convention, gave the small states equal representation in the Senate but on the basis of the Virginia Plan. It was a partial victory for the nationalists, and, Storing says, all they could win without risking irretrievable loss in ratification.The two sides “found the grounds of compromise,” Storing writes, “in their common desire ’to form a more perfect union,’ though their ideas of a perfect union differed.”20 To help us understand the ingredients of such a political achievement, Storing reminds us of the moderating effects that were conducive to its success: of Hamilton’s Plan for a “high mounted” government, which gave the Virginia Plan the middle ground between the Hamilton Plan and the New Jersey Plan; of Franklin’s appeals to God, to prayer, and to the Revolution, which cooled tempers at a critical moment; of William Johnson’s very matter of fact statement of the grounds for the compromise which subsequently resulted; of Abraham Baldwin’s crucial change of vote, against his conviction and his state’s interest, to avert stalemate; and, of course, of the contribution of the presiding officer, George Washington, who spoke only once (and then in the spirit of conciliating those who had doubts about the adequacy of representation) but whose very presence reminded all of the importance of union.21
The creation of the presidency was the second major achievement of the Convention. That critical office was constructed in full knowledge of the opinion, cogently stated by George Mason, that republican government is incompatible with a strong unitary executive, that it relies instead on “the love, the affection, the attachment of the citizens to their laws, to their freedom, and to their country.”22 Storing agreed with Hamilton’s equally cogent response, that the enlightened friends of republican government who held Mason’s opinion had better hope that they were wrong, since “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.”23 Storing argues, moreover, that the presidency is the keystone to the constitutional system of checks and balances. The problem was “how to inform some parts of a government that was basically popular with a spirit that would not be simply popular,” and to prevent the checks and balances from reaching a perfect equilibrium in which no action was possible. “The Founders’ response to both of these difficulties,” Storing wrote, “culminates in the Presidency, an institution that, far more than federalism, represents the Founders’ achievement and their challenge.”24
Storing argues that the Anti-Federalists lost the debate over the Constitution not merely because they were “less skillful politicians, but because they had the weaker argument.”25 On the other hand, their reservations against the new form of republican government draw our attention to a vulnerable feature of American government: its fundamental reliance on interest, with no explicit provision for cultivating and sustaining public spiritedness and virtue.
The Anti-Federal arguments about the primacy of the states in a truly federal system rested on the conviction that the liberty which was characteristic of republican government could only be preserved with a small homogeneous population residing in a small territory. Storing identifies three basic components of this “small republic” argument:
Only a small republic can enjoy a voluntary attachment of the people to the government and a voluntary obedience. Only a small republic can secure a genuine responsibility of the government to the people. Only a small republic can form the kind of citizens who will maintain republican government.26
The first point is that a people’s confidence in their government comes from their knowing the governors; this induces the sensible and virtuous part of the community to declare in favor of the laws, and to support them without an expensive military force. The second point is that responsibility follows from a “full and equal representation,” which means representatives “should be a true picture of the people; possess the knowledge of their circumstances and their wants; sympathize in all their distresses, and be disposed to seek their true interests.”27 Conceding that the elective principle itself will produce a refinement in government, Anti-Federalist Melancton Smith (New York) argues that the more numerous state legislatures satisfy this requirement to a greater degree than the federal legislature can, and that they contain enough of the middling class for satisfactory representation.28 On the third point, the Anti-Federalists argue that “government operates upon the spirit of the people”29 as well as vice versa and that this mutual dependence is ignored in the Constitution. A republican citizenry must be free, independent, and homogeneous. This discussion of the proper character traits of a republican citizen frequently emphasized religion. Storing quotes one illustrative example from Mercy Warren’s History of the American Revolution: referring to the Europeans, whom she fears the Americans will follow, Warren writes:
Bent on gratification, at the expense of every moral tie, they have broken down the barriers of religion, and the spirit of infidelity is nourished at the fount; thence the poisonous streams run through every grade that constitutes the mass of nations.30
Notwithstanding that statement, Storing argues that “the Anti-Federalist position was not so much that government ought to foster religion as that the consolidating Constitution threatened the healthy religious situation as it then existed.”31
Even conceding the merits of the small republic position, was it compatible with union? The Massachusetts Anti-Federalist “Agrippa” proposed that commerce could supply the bond of union rather than coercive government. The problem here, as Storing points out, is that a voluntary recognition of mutual dependence was precisely what characterized the inadequate Articles of Confederation. This attempt to reconcile the small republic position with union produced an interesting shift in the Anti-Federal treatment of federalism. Their original position was that the states are the soul of a confederacy. The Federalists, on the other hand, who were unabashed nationalists in the Federal Convention, shifted to the view that the Constitution was a mixture, partly federal partly national. Then the Anti-Federalists shifted, calling true federalism what they had previously called a mixture, or partial consolidation. The mixture that was now called true federalism involved, for the Anti-Federalists, a division of power and responsibility whereby the states had sufficient means to insure their status. The Federalists claimed this was true of the Constitution. “The road is broad enough,” Storing quotes Oliver Ellsworth: “but if two men will jostle each other, the fault is not the road.” Speaking on behalf of the Anti-Federalists, Storing replies: “But the very breadth of the road, the lack of restriction on the powers of the general government, and its independence of the states, seemed to the Anti-Federalists to make jostling inevitable with the states likely to find themselves in the ditch.”32 The Anti-Federalists proposed a strict delineation of state and federal powers, combined with a limited federal tax power over imports, supplemented by requisitions from the states. Storing comments: “[I]t should be considered whether this arrangement, which would have been widely accepted among the Anti-Federalists, would not have been the mode of revenue raising most consistent with the ’new federalism,’ and what its rejection implies for the new ’federal’ system.”33
In his account of the Federalist reply to the small republic argument, Storing contrasts the Anti-Federalist concern over too strong a government with the Federalist concern about the evils of majority faction. While they did not emphasize this concern, the Anti-Federalists shared it. Both sides supported the majority principle and yet both knew that some applications of that principle infringe on individual rights.The Anti-Federalists “were inclined to think ... that harm is more often done by the tyranny of the rulers than by the licentiousness of the people.” Moreover, for the Anti-Federalists, the threat of licentiousness was met in the same way as the threat of tyranny: “By the alert public spiritedness of the small, homogeneous, self-governing community.”34 On the other hand, the Federalists relied on effective administration and effective representation to meet the threat of licentiousness. 35 As Storing summarized the Federalist reply, the Anti-Federalists “saw civil society as a teacher, as a molder of character, rather than as a regulator of conduct,” 36 as the Federalists saw it. As for the Anti-Federalist attempt to reconcile the small republic view with union, Storing earlier introduced Hamilton’s forceful argument, that if a rational alternative is not firmly embraced, “the absurdity must continually stare us in the face of confiding to a government, the direction of the most essential national interests, without daring to trust it with the authorities which are indispensable to their proper and efficient management.”37
When Massachusetts ratified the Constitution with the understanding that amendments would be taken up immediately, the Anti-Federalist attempt to gain support for conditional ratification, which would have required a second convention, failed, and the Constitution was well on its way to ratification.38 Since the Bill of Rights as passed secured the Constitution and closed off Anti-Federal opposition, Storing finds the common view that the Federalists gave us the Constitution and the Anti-Federalists gave us the Bill of Rights, inaccurate.39
In a sense, the bill of rights is the Anti-Federalist legacy to us. For the Anti-Federalists, the foundation of good government requires “expressly reserving to the people such of their essential natural rights, as are not necessary to be parted with.”40 To the Federalists this seemed to be putting the cart before the horse. As Storing puts it on their behalf,“however necessary a reservation of rights may be, how can the foundation of government be laid in reservations against that very government?” For the Federalists the Constitution is a bill of rights.41 But the Anti-Federalists were able to point to the extensive governmental powers and to the possibility of majority tyranny. Why not, they said, include a bill of rights for safety? What did they have to lose? Storing responds again for the Federalists: “Loose and easy talk about rights was likely to distract attention from the difficult but fundamental business of forming a government capable of doing the things that have to be done to protect rights.”42 The Anti-Federalists were less concerned about this danger since they did not regard the need for government as “the bedrock of the free republic.”43 The Anti-Federalists emphasized bills of rights to restrict governmental power but also to help form a republican character in the people. To make this point Storing quotes the “Federal Farmer”: “If a nation means its systems, religious or political, shall have duration, it ought to recognize the leading principles of them in the front page of every family book.”44
Storing concludes that the Anti-Federalists had the weaker argument because they never successfully met Hamilton’s challenge, from Federalist #23, to cease attempting to reconcile contradictions and firmly embrace a rational alternative. They wanted the small republic but they also wanted union, and the latter required the great and complex republican government of the Constitution. Storing concludes that the constitutional system, “designed so that ... the ordinary operations of government would call for little more than the reliable inclination of men to follow their own interests,.... has been remarkably, if not gloriously, successful.”45 But, if the Federalists supplied the foundation, “the Anti-Federalist reservations echo through American history; and it is in the dialogue, not merely in the Federalist victory, that the country’s principles are to be discovered.”46
The Anti-Federalist reservations against the Constitution were based on the need for republican virtue. Since the Federalists acknowledged this need, the Anti-Federalists could argue, Storing writes, that the Constitution “is distinguished, not by emancipation from this old dependence but by a lack of much attention to the question of how that necessary republican virtue can be maintained.”The Federalists took for granted “a certain kind of public-spirited leadership” and “the republican genius of the people.” Storing wonders whether this is a reasonable assumption. “Can a legal system for the regulation of private passions to the end that those passions may be more fully gratified serve as the foundation of civic virtue?”47 Storing’s answer is “No.”
The Anti-Federalists saw, although sometimes only dimly, the insufficiency of a community of mere interest. They saw that the American polity had to be a moral community if it was to be anything, and they saw that the seat of that community must be the hearts of the people.48
Storing completed his account of the Bill of Rights in an essay entitled “The Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” which he wrote in 1975, shortly after completing his essay on the Anti-Federalists. In it, he shows how Madison steered amendments through the House of Representatives which broadened support for the Constitution without surrendering any power to the states, as the Anti-Federalists wanted.
Storing’s own position on a Bill of Rights, on the basis of his last treatment of the subject, is mixed. On the one hand, he sides with the Federalists in questioning whether a constant emphasis on natural rights, including the right of revolution and popular sovereignty, fosters either popular support for government or responsible government. Even if the principles are true, they can endanger government. Storing thinks this is why Madison shied away from the “standard setting, maxim describing teaching function of bills of rights that the Anti-Federalists thought so important.” 49 On the other hand, in his conclusion Storing refers to the Bill of Rights, especially the First Amendment, “as a statement in legal form of the great end of free government, to secure the private sphere, and the great means for preserving such a government, to foster an alert and enlightened citizenry.”50 Even so, Storing’s final word is that it is in the Constitution’s “design of government with powers to act and a structure arranged to make it act wisely and responsibly... not in its preamble or epilogue [the Bill of Rights], that the security of American civil and political liberty lies.”51
As a follow-up to his course on the American Founding, Storing taught a course on the Constitution and the Civil War. In some versions this course began by examining the Federal Convention’s treatment of slavery and then moved on to consider the major Supreme Court decisions on slavery, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the speeches of President Lincoln, and the Court’s major Reconstruction decisions. For Storing, the existence of slavery, and its tacit recognition in the Constitution, was on the one hand the “flaw” in American government, whose principles declared the natural right of each human being to liberty.52 On the other hand, it was difficult to imagine what more the framers could have done in 1787 without jeopardizing the Union. And since there was no explicit reference to slavery in the Constitution, Storing pointed out how former slave and former abolitionist Frederick Douglass was able to argue that the Constitution was a freedom document. 53 In his treatment of the constitutional crisis that led to the Civil War, Storing highlighted Abraham Lincoln’s understanding of the principles of American government and his ability to communicate them to his fellow citizens as well as Lincoln’s prudent actions as President. While Storing did not write a great deal about Lincoln,54 his essay on Frederick Douglass55 demonstrates how Douglass came to appreciate and later celebrate Lincoln’s statesmanship. And toward the end of his talk on “Liberal Education and the Common Man,” in 1975, Storing described Lincoln’s achievement as he quoted part of Douglass’ speech on Lincoln and indicated that Lincoln was also Booker T. Washington’s model. 56 To Storing, Lincoln succeeded in completing and in some ways in correcting the American Founding.57 That is, Storing saw Lincoln as interpreting the principles of free government to include a morality that goes beyond expediency, as well as consent of the governed and the Hamiltonian principle of “energy in the executive.”58 Lincoln’s position on slavery was that the Missouri Compromise should be restored as slavery was morally wrong, but that the framers’ need to acknowledge the institution’s existence, since they could not eliminate it, meant that the federal government did not have the power to abolish it in the states where it existed.59 And President Lincoln’s position on secession was that it was “sugar-coated” rebellion: it fell between the two stools of revolutionary action, which was justified only by the serious violation of constitutional rights, and ordinary political action, which allowed a constitutional majority to govern, as long as it did not violate constitutional rights.
Storing’s interest in Reconstruction led him to study the political thought of prominent Black American political leaders. He wrote essays on Frederick Douglass60 and Booker T.Washington and compiled an edition of African-American political thought, entitled, What Country Have I? Political Writings of Black Americans. The first part of the title came from a question Frederick Douglass asked while he was an abolitionist. In his introduction, Storing used Douglass’ question to explain his interest in the political thought of Black Americans. Aware that Douglass came to affirm America as his country, Storing wrote that “the question does not thereby lose its potency.”
This question is the glass through which the black American sees “his” country. It is a glass that can distort. Anger, frustration, hopelessness, confusion, excessive inwardness often result from the black’s situation; and they can lead to blindness and an utter incapacity to see the country in anything like its true shape. But the glass of the black’s peculiar situation can also provide a clean, sharp view of America, exposing its innermost and fundamental principles and tendencies, which are largely ignored or vaguely seen through half-closed eye [sic] by the majority of white Americans, whose circumstances do not compel them really to look at their country and to wonder about it. This does not mean that the black is necessarily revolutionary—most blacks are not; but it does mean that he takes seriously the possibility of revolution, or rejection, or separation. He thus shares the perspective of the serious revolutionary. He appeals, at least in thought, from the imperfect world of convention and tradition... to the world of nature and truth. In important respects, then, black Americans are like a revolutionary or, more interestingly perhaps, a founding generation. That is, they are in the difficult but potentially glorious position of not being able to take for granted given political arrangements and values, of having seriously to canvass alternatives, to think through their implications, and to make a deliberate choice.
To understand the American polity, one could hardly do better than to study, along with the work and thought of the Founders, the best writings of the blacks who are at once its friends, enemies, citizens, and aliens.61
Storing thus takes politics seriously by taking both thought and action seriously. This accounts for his interest in both Lincoln’s statesmanship and Frederick Douglass’ understanding of that statesmanship. It also accounts for his appreciation of the Black-American’s taking revolution seriously as an option. At the same time, if one concludes that the regime is fundamentally just, even for blacks, and most African-American political leaders did, that has implications for political action. That is why Storing criticized Martin Luther King.Jr.’s doctrine of civil disobedience: an across the board claim that one can disobey a law one regards as unjust, as long as one does so openly with a willingness to accept the penalty, threatens habitual law abidingness, and thus runs the risk of undermining the necessary conditions for a regime which supports robust freedom.The approach confuses the subject’s perspective with the citizen’s.62 Storing used Frederick Douglass’ shift from abolitionism to support for Lincoln to make the point that the reformer’s dictum that “the purity of the cause is the success of the cause,” was subordinate to the morality of doing as much good as possible. This point went together with Storing’s pointing out that Douglass’ reaction to the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision was fundamentally different from his reaction to the Court’s decisions in the Civil Rights Cases; whereas the former decision “thrust the Negro out of any participation in the American political community” by denying that he could ever become a citizen, the latter, which struck down a federal law aimed at prohibiting segregation in privately owned places of public accommodation, “although wounding the Negro in the house of his friends, did not threaten to turn him out of that house, as Dred Scott had.”63
Storing’s treatment of the principles of American government reflected the appreciation of a friend who knew its strengths as well as its weaknesses. In this respect Storing followed Strauss (and de Tocqueville). One prominent example concerned the Federalists’ conviction that the offices of government had to be constructed so that ambition and avarice would be turned to public benefit. “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”64 Another example came from Lincoln’s speech, in 1838, to the Young Men’s Lyceum, “On the Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.”65 What starts out as unqualified praise for the Founders for establishing free political institutions turns into a subtle criticism of those principles, in so far as they rely on enlightened self-interest, or at least an acknowledgment that foundings are never complete. That is because Lincoln understood the problem of ambition as inherent in the human condition, that “towering genius disdains a beaten path,” and will have fame by hook or by crook.66 For this reason, the principles of modern self-government, which give great weight to security and comfort, may not always suffice to maintain political liberty.
Storing’s most dramatic demonstration of the limits of individual rights and consent appears in his essay “The Founders and Slavery.”67 As much as he admired Lincoln for his understanding of the principles of American government, his rhetorically effective means of presenting his position, and his decisive deeds, Storing showed how the position of the southern slave states might be derived from those very same principles. After acquitting the Founders of the charge that they betrayed their principles in the matter of slavery in the land of freedom (the argument here draws on Lincoln’s distinction between setting a standard and attaining it fully), Storing proceeds to argue that the very principle of individual liberty “contains within itself an uncomfortably large opening toward slavery.”68 As shocking as this statement appears, its elaboration simply reveals the close connection between rights and self-interest, which leads us back to the Anti-Federalist reservations. Storing’s elaboration clearly reflects his study of modern political philosophy with Strauss.69
Thus the slave owner may resolve that it is necessary to keep his slaves in bondage for the compelling reason that if they were free they would kill him; but he may also decide, on the same basic principle, that he must keep them enslaved in order to protect his plantation, his children’s patrimony his flexibility of action, on which his preservation ultimately depend; and from that he may conclude that he is enti-ded to keep his slaves in bondage if he finds it convenient to do so. All of this presumes of course that he can keep his slaves in bondage. Nor does it in any way deny the right of the slave to resist his enslavement and to act the part of the master if he can. This whole chain of reasoning is a chilling clarification of the essential war that seems always to exist, at bottom, between man and man.70
Slavery is admittedly an extreme case, but the general problem concerns the likely disjunction between wisdom and commitment to the common good on the one hand and political power on the other hand. Storing liked to point to the outstanding qualities, moral and intellectual, of a Lincoln or a Douglass as models by which to judge those in positions of authority at the same time he reminded us that “American society is robust enough to take a good deal of mauling.”71
This discussion of the task of statesmanship, or political leadership, leads to the third area of Storing’s work, on the Presidency and the Bureaucracy.
Shortly before his death, at the age of forty-nine, Storing accepted an appointment at the University ofVirginia, as Director of the Study of the Presidency at the White Center for Public Affairs and as the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs. With his work on the Anti-Federalists behind him, Storing planned to shift his teaching and research focus to the Presidency and to public administration in modern American government.
As Storing viewed the founding as a dialogue of continuing importance for American politics, so his teaching and writing about the presidency emphasized what had been settled as well as what had changed. Storing demonstrated how our current questions continue to reflect founding themes. Let us start with the office and its powers. The office is unitary and its occupant possesses “the executive power,” as well as a qualified veto over legislation. In his introduction to the 1969 reissuing of Charles Thach’s book, The Creation of the Presidency, 1775-1789, Storing calls the work “so useful and so sound as to be indispensable.”72 But Storing also suggests that Thach was too willing to take a strong republican executive for granted. Storing begins and ends his introduction with Hamilton’s account of the presidency in the Federalist. On the other hand, what Thach took for granted, Arthur Schlesinger did not. But what Schlesinger, writing in 1973 amidst the debate over war powers, the impoundment of funds, and Watergate, unflinchingly characterizes as a Presidency which “has gotten out of control and badly needs new definition and restraint,”73 Storing characterizes as the inherent tension between republican responsibility and executive energy. Drawing on the Federalist, the emergency powers cases, and Lincoln’s defense of his suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus in 1861, Storing argues for a flexible view of the constitutional boundaries between Congress and the President. This is another way of allowing an expansive interpretation of “the executive power” and “the commander in chief” power, at the same time that Congress is free to contest any presidential action. The problem concerns necessity and its relation to the Constitution, America’s fundamental law. The other practical alternative, which Justice Jackson74 and Schlesinger advocated, is to acknowledge an “emergency prerogative.” Storing, following the Federalist, argues against such a position.
On the one hand, the resort from the Constitution to prerogative tends to undermine the Constitution. But, on the other hand, constitutional barriers will not be able to resist real necessity. So the conclusion the founders drew was that the Constitution must lie with the grain of nature; it must ’constitutionalize’ prerogative, so far as any law can do that.75
This discussion of the office of the presidency led to a discussion of presidential powers. Another aspect of the office, apart from its number, is its mode of election, known as the “electoral college” system. This indirectly popular mode of election served the purpose, in Storing’s view, of insulating the president from direct popular pressure, and thus allowing him some independence at the same time that it provided republican legitimacy Between the presidencies of Jefferson and Jackson, first the mode of election and then the character of the presidency became more democratic, that is, more popularly controlled. Storing had occasion to note the significance of each change and to connect it to founding principle.
In 1977, Storing testified in defense of the electoral college before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Judiciary Committee.76 Senator Birch Bayh, chairman of the Subcommittee, advocated a direct popular election; his special concern was the likelihood, which last occurred in 1888, of a candidate’s receiving a majority of the electoral votes, and winning the election, but finishing second in the popular vote. More than anything else Storing’s testimony written and oral, reveals his aversion to what he called “simplistic democracy” and his interest in what he called “outputs” as well as “inputs,” which meant the effect of a given electoral scheme on the quality of persons chosen and the operation of government. Storing maintained that while the mode of electing the president did not work as the framers intended, it nonetheless “achieves to a remarkable extent the ends the framers wanted to achieve.”77 Storing referred to the element of popular participation, political stability, a place for politically active individuals, a place for the states, independence of the president, and the character and intelligence of the presidents elected. He identified the two party system as a major source of these benefits and suggested that a direct popular vote would weaken those parties.
That is because the “winner take all” rule, which the large states have an incentive to employ under the current system, and which thereby forces all states to employ, discourages third party efforts and encourages compromise within the two major parties. In addition, since he rejected the simplistic view of democracy which equates legitimacy with responsiveness to popular wishes, Storing did not think that the election of a president whose popular vote total was less than his opponent would create a constitutional crisis.78
The other change, effected by President Jackson, was to identify the president as a direct representative of the people as much as members of Congress. Jackson was the first president to use both the executive veto and the removal power for political purposes; he also assumed leadership of the Democratic party.79 Storing, who taught this material regularly in his course on the American Presidency wrote about the conflict between Jackson and the Whigs this way:
When Andrew Jackson defended his removal of subordinates even contrary to congressional legislation, he presented a view of administration as well as a view of democracy. Administration was seen as residing crucially in the president, with the administration serving as his eyes and hands. The Whig view, on the other hand, rested not only on a different (more pluralistic) view of American politics, but also on a different view of administration. The Whigs saw public administration not as a closed hierarchy leading to the top but as pools of official discretion, loosely connected but largely independent. Jackson and the Whigs were primarily concerned with what today we would call the issue of responsibility—Jackson to the president; the Whigs to the law. But the implicit views of public administration are especially interesting here, and the Whig view in particular since it is the one that seems always to lose. This view emphasizes the importance of the exercise of experienced, informed, responsible discretion as the heart of administration. Sound discretion, not obedience to higher command, is the essence of good administration, though both, of course, are always involved. Administrative structures should be built to provide the right conditions for this informed good judgment—independent regulatory commissions are a case in point.80
Thus Storing, noting the democratization of government under the Constitution, approved of independent regulatory commissions as a means of retaining the benefits of sound discretion in administration, along with presidential control of the executive branch.
This discussion of the presidency leads to a discussion of the bureaucracy in American government. Storing notes in several places that the dominant view of public administration is that of scientific management. That means that public administration is considered as a subset of administration simply and the focus is on rules for efficiency. This view of administration goes together with a populist view of politics; together they form a view of government which sharply divides everything into the expression of the popular will on the one hand (politics), and the implementation of that will on the other (administration). We have already seen how Storing criticized both formulations, in light of a more complex, and hence more comprehensive, understanding of liberal democracy and the American polity Some brief illustrations of his position follow.
In his 1977 essay on statesmanship,81 Storing, drawing on the work of Herbert Simon, identifies “two critical principles of the current understanding of practical reason, or rational decision-making:” “the notion of the ’one best method’ and the assumption that all practical reasoning is essentially economic reasoning.” On the first point, Storing maintains that any attempt to get the “one best way” leads to an unending and hence irrational process of information seeking, because the information at a decision-maker’s disposal is always incomplete. Rather than to say, as Simon does, that “these conditions limit rationality,” Storing contends that “one of the most important elements of practical reason—or ’rational’ decision-making—is precisely how well or poorly such limits are grappled with.” Storing points out that Simon acknowledges the impossibility of “maximizing,” which he then replaces with “satisficing.”This refers to settling for an approximation of “maximizing,” which Storing finds commonsensical. While “for Simon it is a necessary falling short of reason,” Storing thinks “we ’satisfice’ because we have the wits to know that we cannot maximize and that we would be insane to try to do so.” On the second point, Storing acknowledges the contribution of the economic approach to practical reason (this approach reduces everything to the instrumental value of “utility”), but he contends that such an account of practical reason is incomplete, because it cannot tell us about the requirements of an adequate defense or how to secure the legitimate rights of minorities.82
Storing’s critique of a simplistic, or “populist,” view of democracy and his critique of the scientific understanding of practical reason are both present in his account of the way to think about the bureaucracy in American government. Storing argued that Leonard White, whose administrative histories of the first hundred years of the American republic he admired, was moving away from an emphasis on the process of administration, and toward a view of administration that identified it with the distinctive character of government. Likewise, in his essay entitled, “Political Parties and the Bureaucracy,” Storing criticizes the civil service reform movement for taking too strict a stance against politics, i.e., the spoils system. “Although the reformers often described their movement as a return to the original principles of the American republic, they paid too little heed to the Founders’ warning that a government fit for angels is not fit for men.”83
Storing argues that both the spoils system and the reformers shared the view that the civil service “should be responsive to the will or ’values’ of the people,” with the difference that one does it by a thorough mixture and the other does it by a thorough separation. Storing argues that the civil service should have “a political agency in its own right,” in order to be able to act as a thoughtful, experienced partner for the politically elected officials. He argues moreover, that the Hoover Commission’s proposal for a senior civil service envisioned such a partnership, after the British model, and he cites examples of its success. While the framers did not “anticipate the full significance of the administrative state,” Storing does find “a close harmony between the original intention of the system of checks and balances and the political role of the modern civil service.”84 That is, the civil service must act as a partner to the political branches of government, and it must follow the laws (Congress) as it assists the political appointees in the executive branch in the administration of government.
Finally, in his Plan for Studying the Presidency, a version of which was submitted to President Ford, Storing proposes a Presidential Commission along the lines of FDR’s Committee on Administrative Management, which report led to the establishment of the Office of the White House in 1939. Storing praised the Committee for setting an agenda “for thinking about the executive and modern American government.” He criticized the Committee for playing down the “political side of’executive management,”’ and for emphasizing the role of “chief executive and administrator.” Storing’s three main proposals concerned how one understands the powers of government, how one understands administration of government, and how one understands the relation between the presidency and Congress in light of “the tension between the president’s role as ’chief administrator’ and his role as a participant in checks and balances.”
Each of these points reflects the ways in which Storing understood American government as a complex arrangement of offices which were constructed to satisfy the different objectives of consent of the governed and of an energetic administration of government.
Herbert Storing took from his study with Leo Strauss an awareness of the limitations of the positivistic approach to politics and an appreciation of the need to take seriously the arguments that were made for political action, as well as the action itself. In addition, his focus on the American founding and the founding principles of American government was informed by Strauss’ appreciation of the strengths and his cautions about the weaknesses of liberal democracy. From the perspective of political philosophy, this form of government’s chief strengths lie in its stability and its capacity to provide for security and prosperity. Because the popular element is the strongest, the mistakes it makes, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted, tend to be retrievable. In his classroom teaching as well as his writing, Storing taught that the Founders’ understanding of government included an appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of the principles of free government and that their achievement, the American Constitution, reflected that understanding, by providing for popular participation and checks and balances, including an independent and energetic executive and an independent judiciary.85
Storing’s work, his writings and his teaching, reflected his twofold view that the Constitution “established a lasting structure of rules and principles,” and that “the political life of the community continues to be a dialogue As he developed that dialogue, Storing showed not only how the Anti-Federalists as well as the Federalists played an important part in it, but also how Lincoln did, how Black American political thinkers such as Douglass, Washington, DuBois, King and Malcolm X did, and how those responsible for the development of the modern administrative state did.
Storing knew that some scholars did not appreciate the understanding and the work of the Founders as he did. For some critics, the Founders’ views were either not sufficiently democratic or not sufficiently scientific. For the historian John Hope Franklin, their views reflected racial prejudice and “set the stage for every succeeding generation of Americans to apologize, compromise, and temporize on those principles of liberty that were supposed to be the very foundation of our system of government and way of life.”86 Responding on behalf of“one of the thoughtful Founders,”87 Storing thinks the Founder would acknowledge the remarkable progress but still wonder whether it has been shown that the races can live together. Regarding the temporizing, Storing asks, on behalf of the Founder, “what more could have been done?” Noting that “prejudice ... is inherent in political life,” Storing writes: “To criticize a Jefferson or a Lincoln for yielding to, even sharing in, white prejudice is equivalent to demanding either that he get out of politics altogether—and leave it to the merely prejudiced—or that he become a despot.”88 While Storing’s Founder notes that the tolerance which extreme heterogeneity requires leads to the “superficiality of social bonds and community values,” he is also intrigued by W.E.B. DuBois’ creative account of how diverse nationalities can be American citizens, with common political ideals and language, at the same time that they also identify by racial and (we would add today) ethnic groups.89 “Reflecting on thoughts like these,” Storing’s Founder “might concede that the huge problem of racial heterogeneity, which his generation saw but could not master, may show the way to deal with another problem, which they did not see clearly, the political and moral defects of mere individualism.”90 Thus Storing shows us the wide range of human types that make up a democratic society such as ours. He shows us the importance and the limits of politics, especially a democratic politics which gives free rein to the peaceful passions.91 At the same time, he directs us to the best possible understanding of those principles, so that American government can be as strong and secure as possible. Reminding us in many different contexts that our government is constructed so that freedom is secured without reliance on “enlightened statesmen,” Storing nonetheless highlights America’s best examples of political leadership, for students to understand and for practitioners to understand and to imitate as well as they can.
I would like to thank Joseph Cropsey Paul Carrese, and Damjan de Krnjevic-Miskovic for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.
When he left the University of Chicago in 1977, Storing’s students honored him at a gathering in which he was celebrated as a “teacher of teachers.” I was one of his graduate students from 1962 to 1968, and one of my students, Frank Kruesi, was present at the farewell ceremony, as a student of Storing’s.
As a graduate student, Storing also studied with C. Herman Pritchett (constitutional law) and Leonard White (public administration). This information came from Joseph Cropsey and Robert Scigliano.
When he first started teaching at Chicago, Storing taught standard constitutional law courses. My colleague Paul Nelson took a two quarter sequence in constitutional law from Storing during the fall and winter quarters, 1958-1959. By the 1960s, Storing had developed special courses in the Founding, the Constitution and the Civil War, and the Presidency.
During my six years as a graduate student at Chicago, I took six courses with Storing, wrote my dissertation under his direction, and served as a research assistant for him in connection with his work on the writings of the Anti-Federalists. Later I assisted in the final editorial work on The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) after Storing’s sudden and untimely death in 1977. I also studied with Strauss and Cropsey.
I have learned from Joseph Cropsey that the practice of addressing faculty members as Mr. or Mrs. or Miss, rather than Dr. or Professor, was introduced by the administration of the University (from a letter, dated April 22, 1998).
The essay appeared in the National Review, vol. 25, December 7,1973. It was reprinted in Toward a More Perfect Union: Writings of Herbert J. Storing, ed. by Joseph M. Bessette, (Washington, D. C.:AEI Press, 1995) hereinafter cited as Writings. This excellent 469 page collection contains much of Storing’s work, including hitherto out of print essays and some previously unpublished material.
Writings, p.445.
Ibid, pp. 445-447. Strauss referred to the Declaration of Independence in the introduction to his Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1953) p. 1. And in his introduction to Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, IL.: Free Press, 1958), Strauss writes that “to the extent that the American reality is inseparable from the American aspiration, one cannot understand Americanism without understanding Machiavellianism[,] which is its opposite,” p. 14.
Storing did not claim to be exhaustive in his account of Strauss’s work. He did not mention Strauss’ work on two important themes or conflicts: poetry versus philosophy and reason versus revelation. Each of these, however, transcends political science as a profession, which is to say political science in the narrow sense.
Another important source for the link between Strauss and Storing is their collaboration in Essays in the Scientfic Study of Politics (New York : Holt Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1962).
Storing edited the volume and wrote a lengthy critique of Herbert Simon’s work (pp. 63-150), as well as a brief preface (pp. v-vii). Other chapters were written by Walter Berns, Leo Weinstein, and Robert Horwitz. Strauss wrote the Epilogue, which has since become famous for its “no holds barred” approach to value free political science (pp. 307-327). It also contains ample evidence to support Storing’s three part characterization of Strauss’s political science.
See Max Weber, “Science as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. by H. H. Gerth and C.Wright Mills, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 129-156, esp. 145-146; and see Strauss’s critique in Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), chapter two.
In his introduction to The City and Man, Strauss contrasts the scientific with the prescientific understanding of political things.The latter view, which is also called the “common sense view of political things,” is the understanding of “political things as they are understood by the citizen or statesman.” Strauss goes on to write that Aristotle’s Politics “contains the original form of political science: that form in which political science is nothing other than the fully conscious form of the common sense understanding of political things.” Leo Strauss, The City and Man, (Chicago: Rand McNally 1964), pp. 11-12.
Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981), seven volumes. Volume one contained his essay, which was also published separately in paperback at the same time. The full title is What the Anti-Federalist Were For! The Political Thought of the Anti-Federalists.
What the Anti-Federalists Were For, pp. 3-4.
Ibid., p. 6.
Cecelia Kenyon, “Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists and the Nature of Representative Government,” William and Mary Quarterly, Jan 1955; also “Introduction,” in The Anti-Federalists (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1966).
Storing, What the Anti-Federalists Were For, p. 71.
“The Constitutional Convention: Toward a More Perfect Union,” first published in Morton J. Frisch and Richard J. Stevens, eds., American Political Thought: The Philosophic Dimension of American Statesmanship, second edition F.E. Peacock Publishers, 1983) p. 55; also in Writings, p. 22.
Supporters of this principle called themselves “nationalists.”The term “nationalist,” as used in the Federal Convention, referred to a supporter of a strong central government; it had nothing to do with ethnic identification, as it often does today.
Writings, p. 36.
Ibid, pp. 25-34, 20.
Storing quoted this in his introduction to a new edition of Charles Thach’s The Creation of the Presidency (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), pp. ix-x. See also Writings, p. 374. The quotation comes from Mason’s notes of his June 4 speech in the Federal Convention; see Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1937), vol. I, p. 112.
This comes from the first paragraph of Federalist #70.
“The Problem of Big Government,” p. 81 in A Nation of States; Essays on the American Federal System, ed. by Robert A. Goldwin (Chicago: Rand McNally,1961), p. 81; also in Writings, p. 301.
What the Anti-Federalists Were For, p. 71. In addition to Storing’s The Complete Anti-Federalist, for a more extensive account of the lesser known federalist writers, see Storing’s “The ’Other’ Federalist Papers: A Preliminary Sketch,” in the bicentennial edition of The Political Science ReviewerVI, pp. 215-47; this is also in Writings, pp. 77-107.
Ibid., p.16.
Ibid., p. 17. Storing is quoting Melancton Smith, from his arguments in the New York Ratification Convention. Smith and “Federal Farmer” made the strongest Anti-Federalist arguments on representation.
Another component of the responsibility argument involved the political significance of jury trials, which some Anti-Federalists regarded as even more important than representation to prevent “those usurpations which silently undermine the spirit of liberty.” This is from the Maryland Farmer; see The Complete Anti-Federalist, [Maryland] Farmer, IV, 5.1.65. Storing quotes this in What the Anti-Federalists Were For, p. 19.
Ibid. This is also from Smith.
What the Anti-Federalists Were For, p. 22.
Ibid., p. 23.
Ibid., p. 34. Ellsworth, a member of the Federal Convention from Connecticut, was also a member of Connecticut’s Ratification Convention. Storing quotes from a speech he made on 7 January 1788; see Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the adoption of the Federal Constitution as recommended by the General Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 (Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott Company, 1891), vol. II, p. 195.
Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 40.
Ibid., pp. 42-43. Storing refers to Hamilton’s statement in Federalist #27 that the people’s affections will be won over by superior administration, which he expects from the federal government, and Madison’s statement, in Federalist #63, to the effect that Americans improved on ancient uses of representation by succeeding in excluding the people “in their collective capacity” from any share in government.
Ibid., p. 47.
Ibid., p. 29, quoting from Federatist #23.
See Robert Allen Rutland, The Ordeal of the Constitution: The Anti-Federalists and the Ratification Struggle of 1787-1788 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1966); Michael Allen Gillespie and Michael Lienesch, eds., Ratifying the Constitution, (Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1989); Murray Dry, “The Debate Over Ratification of the Constitution,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution, edited by Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell,1991), pp. 471-486.
See What the Anti-Federalists Were For,” pp. 64-70. See also Storing’s essay, “The Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” in M.Judd Harmon, ed., Essays on the Constitution of the United States (Port Washington, NY.: Kennikat Press, 1978), pp. 32-48. It is reprinted in Writings, pp. 108-128, and will be discussed further below.
What the Anti-Federalists Were For, p. 66. Storing is quoting “Brutus” here.
See Federalist #84.
Writings, p. 69.
Ibid., p. 69.
Ibid., p. 70. See Complete Anti-Federalist, Federal Farmer XVI, 2.8.196
Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., p. 73.
Ibid., p. 76. At the same time, Storing, who approached his study wondering whether the Anti-Federalists agreed fundamentally with the Federalists, concluded that they did. Responding, in a footnote, to Gordon Wood’s view that the Anti-Federalists were self-sacrificing ”traditional” republicans, Storing wrote that “the Anti-Federalists are liberals—reluctant and traditional indeed—in the decisive sense that they see the end of government as the security of individual liberty not the promotion of virtue or the fostering of some organic common good.” See ibid., note 7, p. 83. Storing’s point about the Anti-Federalists’ thought and his disagreement with Wood both reflect Strauss’ account of the difference between ancient and modern political philosophy. See infra, note 67, for citations to Strauss’ writings.
“The Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” in Writings, p. 125.
Ibid., p. 128.
Ibid. Storing’s point is the Federalist one, that the Constitution secures liberty for the American people through the structure of government it establishes, along with its ample powers. Today, we tend to identify the Bill of Rights with judicial review. Elsewhere in this essay, Storing speculated on how constitutional law might have been different if no Bill of Rights had been added. See p. 118.
Readers today are wont to interpret the Declaration of Independence’s statement that ”all men are created equal” as referring to white males, since blacks were enslaved and women in general did not have the vote.This is not how the Founders understood it, for reasons that Lincoln explained best: first, the reference is to natural rights, not to political rights or other equality claims that might be made; second, no one claimed that this statement of aspiration was, or could be, fully realized at the time. See Lincoln’s Speech on Dred Scott, at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857, in Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings, texts selected and notes by Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Vintage/Library of America, 1992), pp. 120-121.
See Storing, “The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” first published in On Civil Disobedience, ed. by Robert A. Goldwin (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), p. 108; in Writings, p. 248. In his What Country Have I? Political Writings of Black Americans, Storing includes Douglass’”Fourth of July Oration of 1852; in it Douglass wrote,“[I]nterpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” (NewYork: St. Martin’s Press, 1970), p. 37.
Storing assigned Harry Jaffa’s book, Crisis of the House Divided:An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1959) in his course on the Civil War and the Constitution.
“The School of Slavery:A Reconsideration of Booker T. Washington,” in Robert A. Goldwin, ed., 100 Years of Emancipation (Chicago: Rand McNally 1963), pp. 47-79; also in Writings.
Writings, pp. 438-439.
Storing’s final examination in The Constitution and Civil War course, Winter 1966, contained the following question: “Describe as fully as you can the character of Lincoln’s ’completion’ or ’correction’ of the American Founding.”
From Federalist #70.
The Emancipation Proclamation does not contradict this position, since, as an emergency war power, the Proclamation extended only to states which were in rebellion.
“Frederick Douglass,” in Morton J. Frisch and Richard G. Stevens, eds., American Political Thought:The Philosophic Dimension of American Statesmanship, second ed. (ND: F.E. Peacock, 1983), pp. 215-236; also in Writings, pp. 151-175.
What Country Have I? Political Writings of Black Americans, Storing’s Introduction, pp. 2-3; also in Writings, pp. 206-207.
Storing’s argument against civil disobedience as a principled doctrine resembles Lincoln’s argument against secession in this respect: each doctrine falls between revolutionary and conventional political action and, as a result, fails to satisfy the requirements of consent of the government and individual rights. I believe that Storing developed his argument against civil disobedience from his study of Lincoln’s argument against secession. See Storing, “The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” in Writings, pp. 236-258.
Storing, “The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” in op. cit., p. 113; also in Writings, pp. 252-53.
Madison wrote this in Federalist #10. While the immediate context is the extended sphere, the same consideration applied to his argument on checks and balances in Federalist #47 and #51.
See Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings, pp. 13-21.
Writings, p. 19.
This essay first appeared, under that title, in the Bicentennial issue of the St. John’s College publication, The College, in July 1976, pp.17-25. It was then republished in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, ed. by Robert H. Horwitz (Charlottesville University Press of Virginia,1977) under the title “Slavery and the Moral Foundations of the American Republic,” pp. 214-233. It also appears under the revised title in Writings, pp. 131-150.
Writings, pp. 142-143.
The most obvious sources are Strauss’s accounts of modern political philosophy, especially his accounts of Hobbes and Locke. See What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1959), chapter one, esp. pp. 40-50; and Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1953), chapter five.
Ibid., pp.143-144.
“The Case Against Civil Disobedience,” in Writings, p. 258.
In ibid, p. 370.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973), Forward, p. x; quoted by Storing in “The Presidency and the Constitution,” a talk delivered at Beloit College, March 1974, in Writings, p. 379.
This is a reference to Justice Jackson’s approach to the problem of emergency powers in war time in the case of Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944).
See “The Presidency and the Constitution,” in Writings, p. 381. Storing quotes from Federalist #25.
This testimony was originally published in The Electoral College and Direct Election: Supplement, Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, of the Committee of the Judidary, United States Senate, 95th Congress, 1st session, July August 1977, pp. 129-149. Storing’s written testimony is in Writings, pp. 395-402. Martin Diamond also testified before the Subcommittee. He also opposed a direct popular election of the president, and he submitted the pamphlet he had written in support of the Electoral College. See the above cited Hearings, pp.149-185, for his testimony followed by his pamphlet. A comparison of Storing’s testimony with Diamond’s reveals a substantial agreement among these two men, who were good friends, along with a difference in style. Diamond plays the role of the advocate (and he does it very well, I believe), whereas Storing is, as always, the teacher.
Writings, p. 397.
Writings, p. 401.
President Jackson vetoed the bill to renew the national bank in 1832 and then he used his removal power to control the government’s policy regarding the immediate transfer of funds from the national bank to state banks, some three years before the expiration of the national bank’s charter. See Leonard White’s The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History 1829-1861 (New York: Free Press, 1954), chapter 2.As a related, follow up development to the democratization of the presidency, Jeffrey Tulis, who acknowledges his debt to his teacher (“Whatever merit this book displays as a theoretical work derives from the wisdom of my teacher, Herbert J. Storing”), wrote about the development of“popular or mass rhetoric... [as] a principal tool of presidential governance.” See Jeffrey K.Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. ix, 4.
“American Statesmanship: Old and New,” originally published in Robert A. Goldwin, ed., Bureaucrats, Policy Analysts, Statesmen: Who Leads? (Washington. D.C.:AEI Press, 1980); also in Writings, p. 425.
“American Statesmanship: Old and New,” first published, in an incomplete form, as Storing died before finishing it, in Bureaucrats, Policy Analysts, Statesmen: Who Leads? ed. by Robert A. Goldwin (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1980); it also appears in Writings, pp. 403-428.
Writings, pp. 422-424. I have limited myself to Storing’s brief account of Simon. For his full account, see Storing’s essay on Simon in the Essays on the Scientific Study of Politia, supra. note 9.
Ibid., p. 312.
Ibid., p. 320.
What the Anti-Federalists Were For, p. 3.
Ibid., p. 147.This, and the remaining references, come from Storing’s “The Founders and Slavery,” also published under the title “Slavery and the American Republic.” see above note 67. Storing quotes Franklin from his essay “The Moral Legacy of the Founding Fathers,” published in the University of Chicago Magazine, Summer 1975, p. 13.
Storing does not name the Founder. While one must think of Madison, “the Founder” is, of course, Storing himself, drawing on his study of the Founders and his study of political philosophy with Leo Strauss as his teacher.
Ibid., p. 148.
DuBois’ “The Conservation of the Races” appears in Storing, What Country Have I?, pp. 76-88; see especially p. 82.
Ibid., p. 149.
See Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, supra note 67, p. 49, for his discussion of acquisitiveness in Locke, and Montesquieu.