The American founding was fundamentally a search for meaning. In the 1760s, the colonists were working through what it meant to be British citizens, what it meant to be Americans, what it would mean to be independent of British rule. Abstract concepts like liberty and representation were debated at length, and these debates over meaning continued well past the founding and, in fact, continue to this day. The founding plays a major role in contemporary politics, but we still argue over its meaning. Because all too often our interpretation is based on our own ideological or partisan views, these meanings get twisted and muddled over time. Even among the wealth of new scholarship about the American founding, we do not always find much clarification in what any of it means. This is because, as recent books by Mark Somos and Jonathan Gienapp each remind us, the founders themselves were not always sure about meanings.

Mark Somos, in American States of Nature: The Origins of Independence, 1761–1775, addresses the underpinnings of US constitutional thought by restoring the founding generation’s understanding of the concept of a state of nature and looking ahead to how correcting our misinterpretation changes our understanding of what comes later. The state of nature is itself a contested concept; Somos identifies different versions of that concept and how they shifted over time. Jonathan Gienapp, in The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era, starts from the end of the founding, looking at how later interpretations of the Constitution affect how we view earlier understandings of constitutional concepts. After the Constitution was ratified, we as a nation spent more than a decade trying to figure out what exactly it meant, while still leaving many issues unresolved. Both books emphasize shifting meanings that undermine the idea that the founding is a moment that we might use as a fixed point of reference for contemporary politics.

In American States of Nature, Mark Somos makes the simple but important argument that the concept of the state of nature is central to the American founding, an idea “comparable to rights, liberty and property” in importance (p. 2). Its centrality, he contends, nevertheless has been largely missed by scholars for the past two centuries. For Somos, the state of nature discourse proceeds through four stages. The first, the buildup to the Revolution from 1761–72, saw the concept of a state of nature invoked as a source of rights that supported the colonists’ grievances against the actions of Parliament. In the second stage, 1772–75, the concept was invoked to justify independence, as the colonists increasingly saw themselves as effectively abandoned by England and left on their own. In the third stage, 1775–89, a constitutional framework was built on the basis of this distinctively American state of nature, and in the fourth the concept was adapted to developing the nascent state. In this book, Somos explores the first two stages, leaving the latter two for future work.

Following John Adams, Somos finds the beginning of the movement for independence in a speech by James Otis in a court case in 1761. It was Otis, he argues, who first began to transform the concept of a state of nature into a revolutionary idea for the colonists. The idea evolved into “a constitutive sense of American state of nature, in which the colonists formed a natural community” (p. 161). This constitutive meaning, which carries well beyond the works of Otis, formed a basis for colonial arguments for independence, whether partial or total, well before 1776. As early as 1772, and certainly after that, “every side in every colonial constitutional debate… regarded the state of nature as a crucial component of the intellectual and ideological debates concerning imperial reform and the colonies’ future” (p. 216).

American States of Nature makes its argument about as comprehensively as any specialist might want. Somos does not get lost in the weeds so much as digs through them. He pores over journals, letters, and other unpublished writings, often at length, to reinforce his overall argument. Perhaps the best example of the depth of detail appears in chapter 5, where he discusses the importance of different editions of the influential book English Liberties. Somos, across 18 pages of his book, tracks particular editions, where they were published, who made use of them, and how they differed from previous and later editions. It is indeed a fascinating slice of history and commentary on publishing issues, but the reader sometimes loses sight of the broader issues. Much of the book is like that: well written, thoroughly researched, and more than a little obscure.

This is not to say that this book is not important or valuable. Somos turns up previously overlooked documents through archival research and develops new interpretations of events and people, such as when he suggests that our understanding of the importance of the state of nature reveals that William Samuel Johnson, long considered a moderate by historians, likely favored independence long before 1776 (p. 322). There is plenty here of interest even to nonspecialists, although it can be a lot to work through.

All the same, Somos does at times seem to be picking unnecessary fights. For example, although it is true that many historians have made the argument that none of the colonists considered independence before 1773 or even 1776 (p. 336), this does not seem to be a broad consensus in the field. Situating the start of the independence movement in 1761 rather than 1763 is more of a departure but still not a shocking one, because pinning down a precise moment is difficult at best. The book also includes an appendix about the ways in which Supreme Court opinions have misunderstood the early American understanding of the state of nature, which reads more as an attack on certain justices and decisions than a useful extension and application of the book’s concepts. Nonetheless, the book makes a significant contribution and is well worth reading.

Jonathan Gienapp’s The Second Creation picks up roughly where Somos leaves off. He begins his story with the process of establishing governments in the newly independent states. Like Somos, Gienapp argues that we have misunderstood something fundamental about the founding; we treat the meaning of the Constitution as a fixed thing to be discovered, when the Framers themselves were conflicted about what it meant. Whereas 1787 involved “making, inventing, and authoring” the Constitution and the government it sets up, the decades after ratification meant “implementing, construing, and fleshing out” the written document and the institutions it described (p. 3). It was, Gienapp argues, not just that the language was not always clear, but also that it was not even always clear what kind of document a written constitution should be.

The debate over language was especially important during the ratification process. The Federalists praised the vague construction in the Constitution for providing flexibility for the future of the grand experiment, whereas the Anti-Federalists saw in this vagueness sinister designs. The opponents of ratification began insisting that a constitution must be written in plain language and that its interpretation should be clear to anyone reading it. The discussion “revealed the indeterminacy and obscurity of the constitutional text—characteristics that the drafters had not intended to impart and likely had failed to notice” (p. 112). The Federalists insisted that their opponents had misunderstood, but in doing so they tacitly conceded that the language did matter, even though its meanings were not always clear. “A novel interest in constitutional language,” Gienapp concludes, “had not clarified the Constitution’s status as a putatively written text; it had instead revealed a deeper uncertainty about its core identity and ontological makeup” (p. 123).

Gienapp discusses several distinct episodes after ratification to make his argument. The debates in Congress about the president’s power to remove officers required consideration of what to do where the Constitution was silent, as did the discussion of whether the House of Representatives could have anything to say about Jay’s Treaty. The question of a national bank required consideration of how far vague phrases like “necessary and proper” could be stretched, and the decision on exactly how to insert amendments raised key questions about the importance of the original text of the Constitution. Each of these chapters is a useful historical essay on its own and another step forward in the evolving meaning of the Constitution.

The strength of Gienapp’s argument is his ability to highlight important aspects that others overlook. The most important example appears in his discussion of the first amendments to the Constitution. He spends far less time on their content than on the question of whether to incorporate them into the document or add them to the end. This latter decision, he suggests, was more important than the content, and he makes a compelling case to support its significance, because this decision changed the way future generations would look at both the original document and the amendments. This different approach makes the entire book seem fresh and new, even when it is exploring familiar events.

By the time that Congress was debating whether the House should have a role in approving and implementing Jay’s Treaty, there was a significant shift in constitutional interpretation. “Both sides in the dispute,” Gienapp explains, “agreed that historical excavation should prove the ultimate arbiter of their constitutional fight” (p. 291). The words of the Constitution were not going to settle this question without additional guidance, and the turn to history seemed the logical course of action. This precipitated a shift to “thinking archivally,” looking back through old sources to find support for one’s own position. Although this did not generally settle questions, it provided justification for the positions taken by different individuals. This shift ultimately leads to looking for original meaning and to venerating not only the Constitution itself, but also those who wrote and implemented it. In this way, Gienapp argues, the Constitution is “fixed” in time and becomes a moment in history to be used to support a political agenda. Gienapp could do more to draw out the ramifications of his ideas in how we interpret the Constitution, but his account of the development of constitutionalism during this period is convincing and enlightening.

It is easy to forget that the American founders were making up their story as they went along, and that the principles underlying the Revolution and the Constitution were both built somewhat haphazardly through experience. The founding was a conflicted and often muddled effort to discover meaning in difficult times, but both Somos and Gienapp have provided some guidance in finding meaning in the founding itself.