Insurrections, Bank and Private Contracts: How Society shaped the Constitutional Order during the American Revolution

Looking at the revolutionary context of Pennsylvania, the essay analyzes the continuous movement of rebellions during the American Revolution in order to highlight the process of institutionalization of the constitutional order, namely the changeable power relationship that shaped society. The essay reconstructs: 1) the battle for free trade and freedom of property and the resulting rising of the mercantile class as a national elite; 2) the mercantile political project of ordering society by creating a national system of public credit based upon the institution of the public debt and the foundation of the first national bank; 3) the vicissitudes of the bank by analyzing Dissertations of Government, the Affairs of the Bank and Paper Money (1786), one of the most underrated pamphlets of Thomas Paine. By this way, the essay shows how the principle of popular sovereignty and the language of rebellion were intended to be institutionalized as part of the constitutional order that was formalized in 1787-88.