What kind of federalism? The original American republic and the travail of Publius

Abstract

The United States did not emerge as a true nation with strong state institutions  until the second half of the nineteenth century, despite sharing a common culture. The structure initially  shaped  to support  their political  articulation  was the foedus or alliance  founded upon the law of nations. The aim of the article  is to clear up what was the influence  of that foedus in the constitutional  arrangement  of the young republic, from the Declaration of Independence (1776) to the Philadelphia Convention (1787). For this purpose, we expose the influence of thinkers like Vattel, Montesquieu or Pufendorf among the American settlers and the conflict between the States. The result of the study suggests that the federal arran- gement allowed the republic to be recognized by European nations and a strong territorial expansion,  thus postponing  for a time serious inner affairs as the conflict on slavery.