Guest Lecture: A Revolution of One, To Preserve the Many

Dr. Nicholas Jacobs, the Goldfarb Distinguished Chair in American Government at Colby College will be giving a lecture in recognition of America's 250th birthday entitled "A Revolution of One to Preserve the Many." The lecture is generously sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies.

The American Revolution is often remembered as the birth of a single, unified nation. In that story, federalism appears as an awkward afterthought: a concession to slavery and a political necessity that diluted the Revolution’s promise of equality. This lecture offers a different account. Federalism was not a compromise with inequality; it was the founders’ answer to domination. Having thrown off imperial rule, they confronted a harder question: how do you prevent power from consolidating again in your own hands?Their answer was not unity alone, nor rights alone, but rivalry — a constitutional order built on competing authorities capable of checking and restraining one another. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, this lecture asks whether we have mistaken consolidation for progress — and what it would mean to recover a federalism designed to preserve liberty by preserving the many.