This is not incendiary, merely (in my view, and with respect) incorrect.  If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that the American Revolution and the Founding was not simply about rejecting British rule, but also about instituting strictly limited government at the Federal level.  My comments below are way too brief--but in summary, here is why I disagree with your statement.



The American Revolution was not a Revolution in favor of weak and strictly limited government.  It was fought in favor of the sovereign authority of what were, up to 1776, the colonial legislatures.  Prior to about 1774, the colonists would have been happy to have lived in what historian J.H. Eliot terms a "composite" (or in modern terms, federal) empire, under the sovereign authority of institutions in which the king was an integral part.  The British, however, committed themselves to a unified theory of sovereignty, and following Blackstone, denied that sovereignty could be shared between two or more legislatures (and hence denied the possibility of federalism).  After 1774 or so, the colonists increasingly rejected the British monarchy.  After 1776, when they constituted themselves into independent states, they did so on the basis of popular sovereignty and explicitly rejected aristocracy and monarchy in the 1776 state constitutions.



No one at the time anticipated the massive growth of the Federal Government following the War of the Rebellion (still the official designation of the Civil War).  But in the aftermath of the Revolution, and deeply aware of the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation, the Founders devoted serious attention to crafting a Union that possessed sufficient strength to defend itself, both diplomatically and militarily.  In particular, the Founders insisted on the necessity of a strong and enduring Union that could resist both internal pressures towards fragmentation and also efforts from abroad to divide the states (see Federalist No. 7, for example, or for that matter Washington's Farewell Address).  This meant, as Alexander Hamilton correctly understood, that the United States needed to possess both a robust manufacturing economy and strong financial institutions.  (The model for this, ironically, but realistically, was Great Britain.)  And this in turn meant that the national constitution required sufficient flexibility that the statesmen empowered under it could do what was necessary and proper to achieve the purposes for which government existed.  



A robust and powerful national government has thus been a major theme in American constitutionalism from the beginning, although it is not and was not the only game in town.  Thomas Jefferson advocated limited government, as Mr. Waddell suggests.  But, as Constantine Gutzman has most recently shown, there most certainly did exist in Virginia a strong group of nationalist politicians, including most prominently George Washington.



On the constitutionalism of the American Revolution, I have found the following works useful:



Jack P. Greene.	Periphery and Center:  Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1788.



Brendan McConville.  The King’s Three Faces:  The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776



John Phillip Reid.  Constitutional History of the American Revolution



On the Founding, I would in addition recommend:



David Hendrickson.  Peace Pact:  The Lost World of the American Founding.



Forrest MacDonald.  Novus Ordo Seclorum:  The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution.



Jack Rakove.  Original Meanings:  Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution.



All best,

Kevin



---- Original message ----

>Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:57:58 -0400

>From: Walter Waddell <[log in to unmask]>  

>Subject: 10240252Z08 Understanding Virginia's Influence On Our Formation  

>To: [log in to unmask]

>

>One last attempt to more forward:

>

>I conclude it is much to incendiary to proffer as an idea of common contemporary agreement that our Founding 

>Fathers (a great many Virginians) fought a Revolution to be free of as much of "Government" as to be free of just 

>"a government".

>

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Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.

Department of History

James Madison University